


middagh days

by Kells



Series: The Varied Adventures of the Captain and Mrs. Cap [2]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Female Steve Rogers, Growing Up Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 19:30:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 27,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2479826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kells/pseuds/Kells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>miscellaneous side stories from Brooklyn Heights</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. in which Bucky builds a boat

**Author's Note:**

> pretty much I got tired of how Bucky keeps getting slammed into walls or attacked by vampires or otherwise kicked in the face by various Johann Schmidts (and the occasional Loki) and decided I must create an opportunity for fluffy kid-fic before he and Steph get their acts together and produce the adorable grey-eyed children I have promised Rainne.  
> thus, in the meantime, EVEN MORE BACKSTORY.  
> also, Cleopatra. ish.

Millie Travers wanted nothing in the world more than to leave stupid Brooklyn and go home to Lower Manhattan. All her friends were way out there, and her parents were so busy setting up their new store that they had no time for her either. It was a Saturday afternoon, for Pete’s sake, and instead of playing in the park or something she was so bored that she was counting the empty milk bottles waiting for collection across the street. All of a sudden, an almighty crash from the yard behind the apartment block made her lose count completely. Curiosity piqued, Millie wandered out the door and around the corner. She found two boys of about her age hauling crates as industriously as any dockhand. A craft of some kind seemed to be taking shape- though not the one they seemed to have intended, given the hullabaloo that must have been some kind of structural mishap.

“Whatcha doin’?”

They turned as one. The younger boy, dark-haired, grey-eyed and ‘a little wild,’ as Millie's mother would have said, scowled at her.

“Nothin’ we’re not supposed to.”

The guy next to him, who could have been his twin except his face was squarer and his eyes a deep emerald green, clapped his friend’s shoulder to quell his irritation.

“Cool it, boss. She never said anything like that.”

He looked Millie up and down, inquisitive but not unfriendly. “You the Travers kid?”

She nodded, surprised.

“Her da bought the grocery,” the green-eyed boy told the other one, who had stopped scowling but still looked a little wary. “Mam says they’re nice.”

“They are,” Millie confirmed, then laughed at her own phrasing. “We are, I mean.”

“We are too,” the friendlier of the two offered. “My name’s Jack. This one’s Bucky.”

They were twelve and ten respectively. If Millie was eleven, Jack told her like she might not be completely sure, then she’d be in his sister Hannah’s class when she started with them.

“It’s a barge,” Bucky announced, apparently deciding that Millie could be trusted, but not enough to waste any more time on. He treated Jack with the respect warranted by two whole years extra, but it was clear enough who was calling the shots: Jack went back to work with a long-suffering look but willing energy. Millie watched them work, wondering if she could help without being accused of butting in.

“A barge? Like a special boat?”

“An ancient Egyptian boat,” Jack elaborated. “I’m gonna be the bargeman.”

He pronounced it carefully, a word just learnt. Bucky nodded in approval and confirmation. When Millie asked why two boys in Brooklyn Heights needed an Egyptian boat with its own bargeman, he looked at her like she was the one being obscure.

“To go down the Nile,” he said slowly, as though there were no other possible reason. “We’re gonna sail from Memphis to Alexandria.”

“That’s their capital,” Jack explained in a voice that said that he, too, had had to ask.

It wasn’t, Millie objected; Bucky shook his head so vehemently that they could barely see his eyes when he was done. He shoved his hair back like it had offended him, scowling again.

“That’s the new one. Alexandria is Ptolemaic.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Jack grabbed Millie’s arm with both hands.

“Stay,” he begged. “We need more friends like you.”

Bucky turned his back on them, darting for the corner so quickly that Millie began to worry that Jack had really hurt his feelings, but he’d just gone to see who was getting off the bus. He was back before she could ask, shaking his head.

“Not them,” he said shortly. “We should hurry though. Can you hand me that long one over there?”

It was the invitation Millie had been waiting for. She and Jack went to work diligently, and soon all three were surveying their carton-and-crate vessel with satisfaction.

“It’s great,” Millie beamed. Bucky smiled, but he was fussing with his jacket in a way that reminded her of Cousin Joey when he thought he was in trouble. Jack, she saw, had noticed too.

“What’s wrong? You still want we should make it bigger? There’s more boxes, we could do it in time. I can get Hannah if we need more hands.”

The real one would have been _lots_ bigger, Bucky agreed, but that wasn’t the problem.

“It’s too cold. She can’t come out here.”

Millie scowled- she hadn’t realized they were doing all the heavy lifting for someone else’s pleasure. Jack was frowning as well, but for different reasons.

“She’ll be okay just for a bit. You spent the whole day on this!”

The younger boy shook his head sadly.

“Her asthma’ll come back.”

Millie laughed; Bucky said “her asthma” like she might have said “the blood-sucking ghost-monster”.

“Asthma’s not so bad. My cousin’s got-”

She never got to tell him.

“You’re wrong,” Bucky hissed. “You’re _wrong_ , it’s the worst. I think it’s evil. I _hate_ stupid asthma.”

And then he was gone, slamming the door to their building so hard that his Egyptian boat shook to its foundations. Jack righted the bottle that was its prow with a sigh.

“Sorry about him. Our Steph gets real sick, you know?”

Millie shook her head, because of course she didn’t. Steph, it turned out, was Bucky’s fiancée. Millie laughed uncertainly.

“He’s never engaged. Ten’s too soon to be goin’ together, even.”

But they were, Jack insisted- they had been for years, and they would be forever, world without end.

“I’m gonna be his best man,” he said with the same pride he’d taken in being appointed bargeman. “You should come, Mrs. Rogers’s inviting the whole block, pretty much.”

Millie decided it must be pretty serious if they’d already started inviting people, so she nodded and said she’d keep May 1942 free if she could. Jack seemed a lot less worried than she was about March of 1930, though.

“Shouldn’t we go after him?”

Jack thought they didn’t need to bother.

“He’s just worked up because they had to take Stephie to the hospital last night, ‘s why we’re building her a feel-better barge. He’s fine, he’ll just go blab at Gary ‘til he cools off.” 

Gary Richards was _sixteen,_ Jack explained with respect verging on reverence, but he hung 'round with the younger boys sometimes because he and Bucky were close like blood.

“Mam says it’s ‘cos Gary knows what it’s like growin’ up without a da,” he confided quietly; he and Millie shared a sober look.

“I didn’t know you could go to hospital for asthma,” she admitted. Jack shrugged.

“She’s sick all the time, pretty much, but asthma’s the worst- she just freezes up, and then someone better run for Bucky or Mrs. Rogers or else, and sometimes even they can’t do much but keep her calmish.”

Millie cringed. She hadn’t meant to make light of it, she said contritely; Bucky’s self-appointed spokesperson forgave her readily on his behalf.

“Gary’ll fix him. Or Steph will, when she’s home.”

Which would be within the hour, Jack thought. Millie, relieved, risked another question.

“Is she the one who wants to go to Alexandria?”

Jack shrugged good-naturedly. Egypt was warm, he thought, and Bucky was mad for Alexander the Great, who had apparently liked it enough to name the capital after himself.

“Steph’s real keen on Cleopatra. She was queen of the whole place ‘til the Romans showed up, went to war and everything even though she was a dame.”

Millie nodded agreeably. She was about to ask how Jack’s friends had ever developed such a hobby in the first place when the door behind them creaked open again. Bucky had come back with Gary, just like Jack had predicted; both were burdened with whole armfuls of coats, blankets and other soft, warm things. The younger boy looked much calmer, smiling and nodding as he listened raptly to his friend’s suggestions. Jack grinned at Millie as if to say he’d told her so.

Determined to make things right, Millie went over to where Bucky was kneeling inside his mostly-wooden barge and helped him tuck the edges of a ragged-looking blanket around Cleopatra’s throne.

“It’ll look even more Egyptian with all the colours,” she offered without knowing for sure whether that was true. It _would_ look less like a pile of boxes held together by love and borrowed twine, though. “Your Steph’s gonna love it.”

Jack and Gary both beamed in support, but Bucky just nodded distantly.

“She needs nice things,” he murmured. “She gets so sick.”

The crunch and grind of another bus pulling up one stop away distracted all of them; Bucky squinted into the middle distance, then dashed across the yard.

“Eyes like an eagle,” Gary grinned. “Shouldn’t you get Hannah, Jack-o?”

Jack disappeared without a word.

“You wanna see this,” the older boy told Millie, beckoning her over in time for her to watch Steph Rogers fling herself off the bus and into Bucky’s arms. Millie found herself grinning along with Gary as Bucky laughed helplessly, swaying with his alleged fiancée as the whirlwind of gangly arms and straw-coloured pigtails nearly bowled him over. They were too far away to hear what the kids were saying, but Millie wasn’t sure it would’ve been right to listen even if they could have. They didn’t kiss or anything, but Millie could already see that Jack was right- it wasn’t a little-kid kind of cuddle at all. By the time Steph let Bucky up, the two older women who had to be their mothers were waiting for them with tolerant affection.

Millie saw the moment when Bucky asked permission to show Steph her surprise- Stephanie’s eyes lit up as she glanced their way- Millie’s first instinct was to duck out of sight, but Gary just grinned and waved. Bucky’s mam looked reluctant, but Sarah Rogers- who looked just like her little girl, but less breakable- bent to kiss both her daughter and her future son-in-law.

“Gary Richards, are you teaching my new classmate to spy on our friends?”

Hannah Miller was the living image of her brother, down to her chin and eyes, but her hair was a fiery red that seemed even more Irish than everything else about her family already was. She was also carrying a basket of delicate floral garlands. Millie whistled, deeply impressed.

“Did you _make_ these?”

Hannah beamed.

“So we can be court ladies.”

Jack cleared his throat meaningfully; they all fell into place just as Bucky led his family around the corner. Stephanie gasped, obviously thrilled. Behind her, Mrs. Rogers put a hand to her lips as Bucky’s mam patted his shoulder in quiet congratulations.

“All hail our gracious Queen,” Gary intoned in a steady, ringing voice; he and Jack bowed low as Hannah swept a graceful curtsy which Millie scrambled to follow. Even the mothers were in on it- it had to be them clapping enthusiastically. She risked looking up before the others and found Bucky watching Steph attentively as she drifted forward to examine their work.

“Are you _sure_ you’re warm enough?”

Sarah Rogers laughed, steering Bucky’s still-anxious mother towards the door.

“She’ll be fine. You know our boy’s worse than you are about this.”

She pulled the boy himself into a quick hug. “Thank you, James B.”

“Aw,” Bucky murmured, immediately bashful. “It’s just for fun, Auntí.”

“It musta taken you forever,” Steph protested, studying Jack and his makeshift oar with lively curiosity. “What’re you supposed to be?”

“He’s your bargeman,” Millie said helpfully; Steph started to nod, then blinked and tilted her head curiously. “You’re new. I’m Steph.”

 “Millie Travers.”

“She’s gonna be in my class,” Hannah put in. “And she’s been helpin’ these guys all day.”

For most of the afternoon at least, Jack confirmed.

“Good to know ya. Are you guys being bargemen as well?”

They were court ladies, Hannah informed her grandly; Steph giggled.

“Gary too?”

The court ladies spluttered indignantly, but Gary just grinned.

“Your servant, ma’am. May I?”

Stephanie let Gary lift her over the side into her royal boat; by the time she had clambered onto her carefully-erected throne, Bucky had escaped the maternal tag-team and was standing by almost anxiously. Steph waved enthusiastically.

“Come sit! You can be- who was her one again? Julius, right, not the angry guy?”

Bucky grinned, but Millie saw that he was playing with the hem of his jacket again.

"I think they were all angry, pretty much."

Millie, feeling braver than she had before now that Steph Rogers was on the scene, elbowed the youngest boy playfully.

“Don’t you like her one, then?”

Bucky liked Julius Caesar fine, he said, except he’d had a wife at home as well as Cleopatra. Steph frowned with him.

“Should I be her instead, come to visit?”

But Calpurnia had never gone to Egypt, Bucky was pretty sure, and they couldn’t see how she would have liked it much anyway if her husband’s other girl was right there in charge of it and lending them her barge.

There was a brief silence while everyone contemplated the issue, then Gary surprised them by settling an almost-tartan blanket around Bucky’s shoulders.

“It’s too cold for Egypt anyway. Come on, High King, let’s get your lady love back to the great green isle.”

“No one calls it that,” Jack complained, but the others were enchanted already. It helped that Hannah and her brother were a lot more familiar with Irish legends than with Roman Egypt; there was some debate over whether Hannah could be Fionn mac Cumhaill, who was definitely not a girl, but pretty soon the story took shape without much direction from the boy who had refused to be Caesar. Millie revelled in her assigned role as the Morrigan, a witch-warrior-person of some kind who seemed to do lots of exciting things; she was on the point of stabbing a dwarf when High Queen Stephanín turned to her suitor worriedly.

“Is this okay? You wanted to go to Alexandria.”

The High King shrugged prosaically.

“When I find a guy who has just the one wife, maybe.”

He had edged a little closer so Steph could share his huge cloak-blanket. As she grinned up at him, snuggling comfortably like she never had to question that she would be welcome, Bucky looked almost shy.

“You sure you like it?”

“'Course.”

His smile was completely different, Millie thought, when it was just for his girl.

“I’m real glad, Steph.”

Instead of answering, Stephanie caught one of Bucky’s hands in both of hers and held onto it. In front of them, Hannah was wailing and cheering by turns as Jack and Gary duelled enthusiastically, shouting curses at each other in English and Irish both. In the same spirit, Millie turned back to her imaginary foe and killed him off with a deliberate kind of flourish.

“Whoa,” King Seamus murmured, deeply impressed. 

“Right in the kisser,” Queen Maire shuddered.

Millie the Morrigan, deliberating between asking the king and queen to help her fight a dragon and joining Jack in his quest against Gary, decided that she could probably give Brooklyn Heights another chance. It still wasn't Lower Man, she thought loyally, but no one had told her there'd be _quests_.


	2. in which Steph is sick, again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> January 1933: Steph is sick, Bucky won't be swayed from his job, and his mother has a lot of feelings about the whole situation.

Nine out of ten nights Winifred came home to find her son and goddaughter huddled together at the world-weary dining table that had been in the apartment longer than either of the kids had been alive. In all likelihood Bucky would be reading quietly from one of the historical biographies he seemed to prefer above all else, and Steph Rogers was sure to be bent over her sketchbook in the next seat over.

That day, however, the kitchen was empty even of the blanket they kept on hand for Stephanie. Fred looked into the room the Rogers girls shared and sighed at the all-too-familiar sight of her son on his knees by the bed, Sarah’s rosary clasped carefully between his hand and Steph’s. Fred’s god-daughter was asleep already; the only sign that Bucky hadn’t joined her was the way his fingers moved over the cherry-wood beads to track his progress through the Sorrowful Mysteries.

“Go to bed, a Shéamais.”

He shook his head without looking up. Fred came in, tucked the blankets more securely around the little girl shivering in the bed, and laid a sympathetic hand on her son’s shoulder.

“You have school in the morning, a leanbh.”

His hand stilled; Fred hadn’t raised her boy to have two important conversations at the same time.

“I’ll go if she’s better.”

His mother frowned.

“You’ll go because you have to, young man.”

“I’m not leaving her if she needs me.”           

It was funny, in its way. Only days away from turning thirteen, Bucky already looked so much like the father he’d never known that Winifred sometimes wondered how she’d ever be able to look him in the eye when he was done growing, but in every other aspect of his being the kid couldn’t have been less like George Barnes if he’d been trying with all his might. Fred sighed again, lifting her hand to run it gently through Bucky’s soft, slightly too-long hair.

“We don’t just lock her in here and go dancing when you’re not here to watch us, you know.”

He smiled and nodded, but made no move to stand.

“I told her I’d be here. In case she wants anything, you know? She wouldn't eat, before.”

There was almost no point in continuing the conversation, then. No one who’d ever met James Barnes could doubt that he’d die before he broke his word to Stephanie Rogers, especially when she was sick or scared.  

"Go lie down. I'll wake you if she needs you, all right?"

In all likelihood he wouldn't even have considered it, but it hardly mattered: Steph chose that moment to validate her young protector’s instincts by jerking awake in the grip of an ugly coughing fit. Bucky was off the floor and on the bed in less time than it would have taken Fred to think about it.

“Hey, hey, easy.”

Frowning with concentration, he rubbed her back the way Sarah had shown him and shot his mother a quick look of triumph when Stephanie relaxed enough to lean back in his careful embrace. “You’re okay, Stephie.”

Stephanie nodded against his neck, calming as it got easier to breathe.

"Thanks, my J.”

Fred stiffened in something like alarm, but Bucky didn’t even seem to notice.

“Poor Stephanín. You want some soup, you think, since you’re up?”

Stephanie pulled a face that said she’d rather swim the Hudson right then in the dead of winter. Bucky grinned apologetically but didn’t let the issue drop. “Tea, then, maybe? Or just milk, I guess, but-”

Winifred laughed at the sleepy aggravation on Stephanie’s face.

“She just wants to go back to sleep, a stór.”

It was only when Stephanie gasped in surprise, head whipping round so she could see the doorway, that Fred realized her goddaughter hadn’t even realized she was there. Steph smiled when their eyes met, but Fred had already seen the way her hands tightened protectively on Bucky’s shoulders.

“I could have some tea,” the patient decided. Bucky smiled so widely Fred felt a shameful moment of irritation. It had been years, probably, since anyone but Stephanie had made her son look so completely content even for a moment.

“I’ll go,” she said simply. Because the apartment was tiny and the walls barely solid, Fred could make out most of their conversation even in the other room. Steph had asked whether Bucky was still reading his Campaigns of Alexander, and as Fred measured out the milk and sugar her son recited the minutiae of some ancient battle or another in a more animated voice than Fred had heard from him in days. By the time she came back in, Bucky was sitting up against the headboard with one arm around Stephanie, who was listening avidly as she leaned into his chest as naturally as if she belonged there. Fred could practically feel Sister Margaret Aloysius glaring all the way from County Clare, but before she could say anything about proper distance Steph’s hands started to tremble violently, the way they did when she was sick and a little dehydrated. It was entirely because Bucky _was_ right there with her that the poor girl didn’t end up scalded on top of everything else.

“I hate this,” she hissed, rubbing her eyes vigorously to disguise frustrated tears. “Bucky, I _hate_ this.”

He raised his free hand to catch Stephanie’s wrist before she added blindness to her list of frailties.

“I know, a chroí. It’s just for a little while, though, right?”

Fred felt the air leave her lungs in a terrible rush. With piercing clarity she saw that she had to leave the room before she broke down or screamed at her already overwrought son to take back the words he couldn’t possibly mean the way he’d said them.

She had no idea how long she stood there, but she was still watching the traffic and wishing she could smoke in the apartment when the front door creaked open. Sarah shut it firmly, but didn’t come further into the apartment right away. She raised an eyebrow at her best friend as she shucked off her snow-slicked boots.

“Are you doing dishes at this time of night?”

“Did you know my son calls your daughter ‘a chroí’?”

Sarah paused, obviously taken by surprise. A warm smile was already transforming her wan face.  

“Good for him," she decided as she crossed the room to look in on her daughter. "Steph’s been calling our James ‘mo rún’ ever since she heard Joe say it to me, but I don’t think she’s worked up to saying it to his face yet.”

Winifred, remembering the way her son had taken “my J” in his stride, was less sure of that than she wanted to be.

“Is that appropriate? They’re just kids.”

Sarah laughed quietly, pausing in the doorway to her room with an expression of pure tenderness on her face.

“What’s the harm? Just look at them.”

They were both asleep at last, heads bent close together like they were still whispering endearments they weren’t old enough to understand. Bucky had one of Steph’s hands clasped in his; even in sleep he held it with the same reverence he’d shown to Sarah’s rosary.

“It’s not right,” Fred muttered, thinking of Sister Margaret Aloysius again. Nearly-thirteen was definitely too old to let them share a bed like that.

“Leave them be,” Sarah hissed too fiercely; Bucky, maybe the lightest sleeper Fred had ever known, raised his head at once.

“Auntí? You want I should get outta here so y-”

“No,” Stephanie interrupted, eyes still firmly shut. The hand Bucky wasn’t holding crept up his neck as if to tether him to her. “You stay.”

Sarah chucked her daughter gently under the chin.

“Don’t keep that boy up all night, Steph Rogers, you’re enough work in the daytime.”

Steph murmured something sleepy and agreeable; Bucky looked entirely taken aback by the concession he’d never have asked for. Sarah patted his cheek fondly.

“You’ll come get us if either of you need anything.”

“Sure.”

“Good boy.”

He smiled, but his eyes were unsure as he glanced towards his mother.

“Oíche mhaith, a stór.”

She told herself that the surprise on her face meant he knew she was right rather than that her own son assumed she’d never take his side.

“Codlach sámh,” he murmured, and for a moment looked just like her tiny child again rather than the man of the house he was slowly but surely growing into. Fred crossed over to the bed and kissed his poor chilled brow.

“Get some sleep. We’ll talk about school in the morning.”

He smiled more freely, and was almost all the way asleep again by the time Sarah shut the door behind herself. 

“Sarah, we can’t just-”

“Let them have this, Fred, all right? They’re just kids, like you said- they won’t get up to anything you’d have to tell your nuns about.”

“A chroí,” Winifred muttered doubtfully, still thinking of that other pair of silver-grey eyes, lit by a fire that had burned too hot to last. Sarah shrugged, wrapping her shawl around her as she shivered.

“I think it’s sweet. God knows they mean every word.”

“They mean it now,” Fred grumbled. Sarah looked away as her voice dropped.

“Now might be all they get, Fred.”

Suddenly, Fred thought she understood the aching sympathy with which Joe Rogers’ young widow sometimes watched Bucky as he waited on her daughter hand and foot.

“They won’t sleep nearly as well if we split them up. I’ll stay with them if you really want, or you can.”

Fred, who had been in there and been completely forgotten twice in short succession, shrugged because she didn’t think it would make that much difference. Sarah elbowed her gently.

“Do you remember being, I dunno, sixteen or twenty? When you were young and free and as far as you knew you were going to live forever?”

Winifred closed her eyes, her chest suddenly tight. She thought about being eighteen, just weeks off the boat and already completely in love not only with New York but with the quiet, handsome Yankee holding her hand while they watched the water down by the wharves. Winifred had murmured something about needing to get home; George had nodded, called her still-too-thick accent ‘real pretty, just like the rest’a ya’ and then kissed her like they’d known each other much longer than they had. If he’d asked- and he had asked, a few months later- she would have promised him forever in a heartbeat.

“Sure, but-”

“Your boy’s never going to have that, you know.”

He was just a kid, Fred wanted to protest again, still obsessed with chariots and ancient kings, his head half full of Alexandria and Persepolis and half with the names of every kind of train that had ever been built in America. He should have _years_ before he had to think about his own mortality- except it wasn’t _his_ that was the problem. Sarah saw understanding dawn and smiled sadly.

“All the more,” Winifred whispered, thinking of Sarah’s own still-present grief. “Sarah, how can I let him-“

“He’ll never forgive you if you don’t.”

The steel in Sarah’s voice was a stark reminder that this frail young woman had left home and family behind for love. “Don’t you dare make him choose.”

She’d never thought about it like _that._ Her chest felt tight again, but for a different reason- she’d never wondered if she could be jealous of her own god-daughter, frail as a lily but already the source and centre of Bucky’s whole life. Of course she’d never make him choose- she already knew she wouldn’t like the answer.

“Fine,” Winifred decided, bumping Sarah’s hip with hers to show she wasn’t out of sorts. “But when they try to elope next year _you_ can tell the cops why they think they’re old enough.”

Sarah burst out laughing, which turned into a choking cough before it could wake the future miscreants. Fred reached to pour more tea, but Sarah waved her off, still grinning like a loon.

“They would, as well,” she wheezed, enchanted. “James’ll get his Gary Richards to drive them to Jersey so we can’t tell on them.”

Winifred’s reproachful look was tempered by the smile tugging at her lips.

“Sarah Rogers, you’re just as bad as my son.”

Sarah’s grin was wistful.

“I’m sure I’m very glad of that.”

Fred wasn’t sure at all, of any part of this, but it was none of it in her control in any case.

“I hope to God he will be too,” she admitted helplessly. Sarah murmured ‘Amen’ even though it hadn’t started out as a prayer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haven't introduced new Irish in a while! 'Oíche mhaith agus codlach sámh' is 'good night and sweet dreams'; 'a stór' is another way to say 'my treasure' (the other is 'a thaisce' like both Sarah and Steph prefer). 'A chroí' means 'my heart'.


	3. in which Steph has a question

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steph wonders how you can go fifteen years and change without asking a really obvious question. Bucky's answer raises other, more immediate questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apparently on Valentine's Day I write fluffy nonsense fluff. happy halfway-through-February!

“Do you have a favourite colour?”

Bucky, sprawled across the sofa that was also his bed, looked up from his book wearing one of Steph’s favourite expressions. It was an indulgent look, but not the slightly scared one that meant he’d do anything she asked when she was sick. This one had no edge of desperation- it just meant Bucky was glad to be there with her, and that he was paying attention the way only he ever did.

“What’s that, Stephanín?”

“D’you have a favourite colour, I said. You’d think I’d know by now, but-”

She trailed off, more self-conscious the second time around.

“Guess,” Bucky suggested playfully, setting his book aside to give her his full attention. He grinned at Steph when she glowered at him for his total inability to answer simple questions in a straightforward way.

“Green,” she suggested dryly. “Éirinn go brách and all that.”

Bucky laughed. 

“Mam would like that, huh.”

“Brown?”

“Does _anyone_ like brown best?”

Steph shrugged.

“Franciscans, I thought, maybe.”

He _had_ picked that for his Confirmation name. Bucky shook his head, amused. Steph frowned in concentration, trying to think about his wardrobe- except half of Bucky’s clothes had been Gary’s at some point, and the rest were a slightly ragged collection of gifts from their mothers, Sarah Miller, and Steph herself. Maybe it wasn’t her fault she hadn’t figured it out yet.

“Do you know mine?”

“Blue,” Bucky declared with confidence. “Kind of purple but mostly blue, like in your painting of the lily pads.”

Steph scowled.

“ _Water lilies_ , Buck. And it’s not _my_ painting, it’s by Monet.”

Bucky only grinned.

“Your _favourite_ , I meant, okay? The one you’d look at all day and all night ‘til your eyes fell out if only we would let you.”

Steph had been trying to get Bucky pick a favourite of his own pretty much since the day he’d convinced his mam that Steph _needed_ the giant book of art and artists they'd eventually got her for her birthday. Even in the face of Raphael and Kandinsky and every Impressionist Steph could name, though, Bucky only ever showed much interest in the ancient statues of people he seemed to know about as well as their own friends. He probably knew Alexander the Great’s favourite colour, Steph thought grumpily- the dear knew he spent enough time staring at that oddly intense marble face.

“Is it _white_?”

Bucky laughed, pushing himself to his feet as Steph came forward to meet him; suddenly they were standing very close together.

“It’s not.”

There was something not quite right with his eyes- like maybe he _was_ scared, after all, just a little.

“You really wanna know?”

Steph swallowed, but she’d never weaseled out of a challenge before.

“I asked, didn’t I?”

He was trying not to smile, she was pretty sure.

“It’s blue, too.”

Steph frowned, thinking that over. Bucky had to know she didn’t need him to agree with her, not about something like this, and yet-

“Are you sure?”

He nodded. “Like Monet or like Titian?”

Bucky put his hand on Steph’s shoulder like he thought she was going to bite him for getting too close. She turned with him, smiling to cover the way her heart leapt when he winked at her in the mirror over the fireplace.

“Just blue. Not like Monet or Manet or that guy who cut off his-“

“Van Gogh. Vincent.”

“Yeah, him.”

He blinked. “I mean, not like him.”

Bucky was still watching her eyes in the mirror. Steph felt her face heat as she realized what he was getting at.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, Steph.”

She turned to face him, feeling very brave and also strangely terrified.

“Never knew you were such a sap, James B.”

Bucky tugged her just a little closer; of course she went willingly.

“You don’t know everything about me.”

“I will,” Steph promised, not completely sure what she was saying. Bucky smiled almost bashfully.

“Sure you will,” he agreed, his voice a little huskier than usual. “Steph, a chroí, I’m gonna kiss you now, okay?”

And then he did- just quickly, but full on the lips like he'd never ever done before. Not three seconds later they were standing as far apart as they could while still holding hands, Steph grinning already while Bucky was flushed scarlet and doing his best to look anywhere except at her.

“Huh,” Steph muttered, impressed. “Your questions’re a lot better’n mine, today.”

He didn't look up right away, but his lips quirked.

“Sometimes it’s not so bad bein' a sap. You want I should ask again?”

They’d been wrong before, Steph realised- it turned out there was a shade of red, just so, that was streets ahead of any blue she’d ever seen in oil or watercolour. She shook her head, emboldened by Bucky’s unexpected shyness, and pressed one cool hand to his poor overheated neck.

“For what? You think I'm gonna change my answer?" 

He seemed to think it warranted investigation, just in case, but Steph thought she could live with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Éirinn go brách- Ireland forever! St Valentine is also Irish, Winifred would like to stress.


	4. in which Bucky WILL be there

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah takes Steph (aged 11) to visit some relatives over the summer. It's not as much of a vacation as she was hoping.

Steph shot up as though the whistle threatening to burst their ear drums was also connected to her own nervous system.

“Mam! Mam, we’re here!”

Sarah Rogers couldn’t help but smile at her daughter’s thrilled expression.

“I really thought you’d be this excited to _go_ on vacation, a thaisce.”

Her tone was more curious than reproachful, which was just as well- Stephanie was far too distracted to even acknowledge the six weeks she'd spent vacillating between quiet stoicism and open pining.

“Could you fix my hair before we get off?”

Sarah patted the seat next to her, smothering a laugh that could not fail to offend when Stephanie flung herself into it as though the use of more force could hurry the whole train along. Usually, brushing out her little girl’s bright-gold hair was soothing for both of them, but between the rattling of the carriage and Steph’s total inability to stay still it took all of Sarah’s energy to make sure she got her eleven-year-old’s hair into its long, even queue without hurting her. Glued to the window in front of her, craning this way and that as if she might be able to spot a very particular dark head before the train pulled in, Stephanie hardly seemed to notice. When she was done, Sarah put one hand on her daughter’s narrow shoulder as if to physically restrain the little girl’s brimming anticipation.

“You know your Auntí has to work today, right?”

Steph shook her head, frowning.

“He said he’d come.”

He had, in fact, given just that promise, running along the platform with ragged determination while Steph sobbed inside the carriage with more helpless desolation than Sarah remembered showing when she’d had to send her Joe off to war. Sarah might have laughed out loud at the pre-teen melodrama of it all if she hadn’t stopped and thought about it long enough to realize that the kids had never yet spent more than a night apart, and even then only when Steph had to be kept at the hospital overnight.

“You’ll have fun with your cousins,” she had promised as Steph turned away from the window, still hiccoughing in her grief, but her daughter hadn’t been at all convinced. All things considered Sarah thought the visit had gone fairly well, but the subdued shadow of a girl drifting from relative to relative with an air of pained obedience had been a stranger to her. For days on end Sarah had worried that Steph might be coming down with something more serious than the flu, but as far as she could tell the only thing her daughter had been suffering from in Boston was a chronic lack of Bucky Barnes.

“I know he wanted to, sweetheart, but he might not-”

Stephanie turned all the way around in her seat to meet her mother’s eyes. There was reproval there, Sarah thought, as well as a quiet, deeply zealous faith.

“He’ll be here.”

Sarah squeezed her daughter’s shoulder with pre-emptive and wholly unwanted sympathy before giving herself over to the job of making sure all their belongings had made it back into her bag before the train pulled in. Steph was still pressed to the glass when the announcement came that it was safe to disembark.

“C’mon, a Mháire.”

“Can’t see him,” Steph whispered, standing stock-still on the platform. This time, Sarah failed to stifle her sigh.

“He’ll be waiting for the bus, a thaisce. He’s just little still, Fred won’t want him to-”

“Steph! Steph!”

If Sarah hadn’t dropped her bag to grab her daughter by the belt of her dress, Stephanie would have met her death, cost an innocent porter his employment, or both in her attempt to plow right through the poor man’s baggage. Bucky, never one to let other people’s lives get between him and Steph, darted around the cart with the same sure-footed grace that saw his mother clutching at Sarah with one hand over her eyes while he climbed any tree that could more or less take his weight.

“There you are,” Steph breathed, flinging herself at him with tangible relief as soon as her mother let go of her. Bucky looked surprised for a moment, but caught Sarah’s daughter securely around the middle.

“Here I am,” he agreed.

“Don’t go away so long again, okay?”

“Never,” Steph promised in a voice that shook with the force of her determination. After a moment she pulled away to look him over earnestly.

“Your hair’s got long.”

“Your mam was with you,” Bucky pointed out- Sarah was the only person who’d ever cut his hair. Even as Sarah wondered whether Fred knew her son had made it all the way into the city without her, she thought it was probably for the best that Bucky’s mam wasn’t there to witness Steph sliding curious fingers down his neck to examine the unexpected curls that were developing.

Someone put a hand on Sarah’s arm unexpectedly, and she whirled on her would-be attacker to find Bucky’s chaperone of choice grinning at her apologetically.

“Sorry! Sorry, I was just gonna- afternoon, Mrs. Rogers.”

“Gary Richards, are you _trying_ to give a girl a heart attack?”

“Sorry,” he said again.

“Can I give you a hand with this, you think?”

She laughed, nodding to show he was forgiven but taking a little revenge by reaching out to ruffle his sandy hair as he bent to get her bag. Gary grinned and ducked away, smile softening as he watched Steph receive a somewhat crumpled handful of wildflowers as though they were the crown jewels themselves.

“Good trip?”

“Too long by half. Or by…all of it, I suppose, if you ask my Steph.”

Gary nodded with the fellow feeling of a guy who didn’t have to imagine what it had been like for Sarah, on her own with an uncharacteristically morose little girl.

“Did you know six weeks is _nearly longer’n Lent, even_?”

Sarah laughed delightedly at Gary’s spot-on imitation of the younger boy.

“Poor Bucky,” she murmured, not really joking. Gary, too, looked quite sympathetic even as he smirked.

“I’d say ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder,’ but you know I’m not sure that’s possible.”

He raised his voice a bit.

“Barnes! Were you raised by wolves? Come say hello, you heathen- your girl’s not the only one that’s just got in.”

They came over hand in hand, Bucky holding Steph’s little valise while she clutched his haphazard bouquet in her free hand.

“Hiya,” he said obediently, as warm as he ever was but also, maybe, just a little stiff. Sarah _had_ taken Steph away for weeks on end, she thought repentantly, _and_ been the reason her daughter had been in tears the last time Bucky had seen her. Suddenly touched beyond all measure, Sarah put her arms around the little boy and held him close, just for a moment.

“Thanks for coming, James B.”

He stuck his chin out, somewhere between proud and defiant.

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

“He did,” Gary murmured, wry and teasing but totally fond.

“ _Every day_ he said that. Sometimes a bunch of times.”

Bucky looked away, cheeks flushed from more than his recent exertions, but Steph was about as triumphant as if she’d been given front-row seats to the second coming.

“I told you,” she reminded her mother softly.

“So you did,” Sarah admitted, and Bucky beamed. Gary tugged Steph’s braid in greeting, winking at her roguishly when she scowled at him.

“Is that any way to look at the guy who brought you your best guy?”

“He’da come anyway,” Steph murmured, wholly confident; Gary chose to let her have the last word on that subject. They didn’t talk too much more until they were settled on the bus, Steph and Bucky across from Sarah and Gary with their luggage in between them.

“Go on, then- did you enjoy Boston or what?”

Steph glanced at her mother almost apologetically before she shrugged at Gary.

“It was okay. There were a lotta churches. And a river, and some ducks.”

“We’ve got churches,” Bucky muttered.

“Ducks too. And a river.”

Stephanie nodded readily.

“Ours are better,” she assured him, and began to list the ways she had found Boston interesting, but also sorely lacking. Gary turned away to disguise his laughter as a coughing fit.

“Rungs to Sainthood,” he muttered in an undertone, referring to one of Sarah Miller’s go-to phrases to describe the more thankless aspects of being a parent. Sarah cocked her head at him with a wry look.

“Ours or theirs?”

If she’d had to endure another week of Steph’s soulful sighing, she meant, Sarah really wouldn’t have been all that surprised if an angel had turned up halfway through dinner to hand her despondent child a martyr’s palm and spirit her swiftly from the room. Gary shrugged agreeably, not sure it made that much difference to his main argument.

“Just do us all a favour and take him with you the next time you decide to show our Steph anything outside the neighbourhood, okay?”

“My hand to God,” Sarah said quite solemnly, and Gary laughed at the look of pure scandal on Bucky’s face at the sight of Steph’s mam taking oaths.


	5. in which Steph hates (nearly) everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> late winter, 1933; Steph reflects on how everything is awful except one James Barnes.

Six weeks into her new life as the last surviving member of her nuclear family, Steph Rogers was having a hard time deciding what she hated most in the world. She’d hated winter for a good long time already, but _killing her mother_ was far, far, worse than its general state of being too cold and leaving Steph confined to the apartment while Bucky ran too fast and brained himself repeatedly on icy sidewalks. She’d hated the ‘flu pretty much since the first time she ever had it, too, and more than that after the time Bucky got it bad enough that his mam had refused to let Steph see him for _days and days_ in case she got it too, but now it would always be the thing that had taken Sarah Rogers from her family way before they’d been anywhere near ready to give her up.

Steph fought back a sob because she also hated crying- it was stupid and for babies, and it hurt her throat besides. She’d also been doing it intermittently for so long she was beginning to forget what it felt like not to have swollen, itchy eyes that hurt whenever she blinked. She hated eyes too, she decided- not just her swollen, itchy ones, but everyone else’s too- or at least the way they looked these days. She hated people feeling sorry for her, and she hated people trying to help, and she really, really, really hated people telling her “it’s gonna be all right, sweetheart” when it wasn’t, and it couldn’t, and they had no business trying to hug her if they were going to lie right to her face while they were doing it. Steph sat straight up in her bed- which she also hated, because it was too big and too cold and too awful without her mother in it too- and wondered whether maybe she hated people, too. She steeled herself to at least try not to scream at whichever friend or friend’s mother was the first to leap out of their chair to get her tea, or soup, or five other kinds of food she hated because none of it tasted like when her mam made it and because she didn’t _want_ their food any more than she wanted their stupid, sympathetic lies.

When she did turn the corner, though, it was to find that there weren’t any well-meaning auntís cluttering up the living room at all- just one James Barnes, sitting quietly at their table with the bashed-up copy of Arrian he’d been reading and re-reading for maybe six months or more.

“Bucky,” Steph murmured, then stopped talking because she hadn’t really planned that far ahead. He looked round as soon as she spoke, his lips already turning up in the smile he only ever smiled for her.

“Hey. I thought you were still asleep, maybe.”

“I don’t hate you,” Stephanie announced instead of answering him properly.

“Not even a little bit, Buck.”

He nodded uncertainly, pushing his chair back slowly so he could stand and come to meet her in the middle of the room.

“That’s good. I guess you know I don’t hate you either.”

She shook her head, eliminating the space he’d left between them so she could put her arms around his shoulders and hide her face against the scratchy, still-starched fabric of his shirt.

“No, you love me lots and lots.”

He stiffened for a second, like maybe he was a bit embarrassed, but not like he wished he could take it back.

“Yeah, Steph.”

He seemed to take her authoritative nod as permission to show it, too, because it was only after Steph confirmed what she’d already told him she knew that Bucky crossed his arms at her waist and let his lips ghost, ever so carefully, over Steph’s forehead. That was good, she decided- but then wondered whether Bucky maybe loved a different Steph lots- the one from before, who still had a mam and didn’t hate everything on God’s earth except Bucky and maybe-probably church (except funerals). She pulled away so she could see his face for his next answer.

“Even when everything makes me mad and I wish everyone ‘cept you would go away and leave me alone?”

Bucky’s arms tightened around her like they did when her asthma got worse and scared him more than usual, but he was still smiling slightly.

“Even then. You want me to swear?”

He would, as well- thinking about it for the first time ever, Steph realized she wasn’t sure there was anything Bucky wouldn’t do if she asked him to.

“No,” she decided.

“I believe you, a Shéamais.”

He nodded, still very serious. One of his hands slid carefully through the tangled mane of Steph’s half-combed hair.

“I hate that too,” she confessed, suddenly self-conscious. She’d been trying on and off to braid it like Sarah always had, but every time she failed- or almost managed, which was sometimes worse- it just made her long for her mother even more. It was such a stupid thing to be so upset about, but-

“I could try. If you want.” 

If it had been Sarah Miller offering, or Hannah or Millie or even Auntí Fred, Steph was almost sure she’d have grabbed the nearest pair of scissors and hacked her hair off at the roots, right then and there. It wasn’t, though, and she found herself agreeing without the least reluctance.  

“Could you?”

She let Bucky push her gently towards the chair he’d been sitting in before, and sat quietly while he stood behind her, thinking about it.

“Do you have a- you know?”

Steph fished about in her pocket and came up with an elastic hair-tie that she almost mostly didn’t hate, and found herself smiling again when Bucky slipped it casually over his wrist without a second thought. He went to work quietly, and very seriously- it made Steph wish they had a mirror, because she’d always kind of liked the way Bucky looked suddenly very grown up when he was working extra hard on something important, and she was pretty sure he had exactly that face on right then. They had a couple of false starts, but then Bucky gave an exclamation of satisfaction which must have meant he’d figured it out, because only a minute or two later he was done.

“It’s not right, exactly, but I think I can-“

Stephanie stood up, but instead of heading for the washroom to check her reflection she put both arms around her best, best friend and long-time fiancée again.

“It’s perfect. Thank you.”

"You haven't seen it, Steph."

"Shut up. I like it, I said."

This time he didn’t wait nearly as long to hug her back.

“I miss her too,” Bucky said quietly, smoothing his hands down the back of Steph’s dress like he was trying to get the creases out.

“All the time, every day.”

“I know,” Steph assured him, because she did- both what that was like and that she wasn’t the only one who’d been hurting since Sarah had up and left them all on their own. She tugged Bucky over to the sofa that was also his bed, waiting for him to pick a spot so she could curl up next to him. As he slung an arm around her, careful like he always was rather than the way everyone else was being, Steph realized she couldn’t even remember the last time it had been just the two of them together.

“I think maybe I’ve been missing you too, though.”

He looked surprised at that; Steph would never tell him she was pretty sure he was blushing, even. 

“I’m right here,” he protested mildly. Steph squeezed his hand to show she’d always be glad of that, then pressed right up against Bucky’s side and rested her head on his shoulder.

“D’you think it’ll be Sarah Miller who comes check on us next, or Mrs. Clary?”

He sighed, world-weary but not totally ungrateful.

“Sarah was here earlier, she brought the I-dunno-what-thing that’s on the counter. It’ll be Mrs. C or Millie and her mam, I bet.”

“I hate them all,” Steph murmured, but she didn't mean it as much as she'd thought she might, alone in her room.

“I hate coffee, too. You want a cup, if I make some? It’s so cold in here. I hate winter too, did I say?”

Bucky’s shoulders shook as he laughed silently, jostling Steph so her teeth clacked a couple times. If he’d chosen that moment to grab hold of her and insist like everyone else seemed to that things were going to be fine if she’d just wait long enough, Steph thought maybe she might have believed him. Because he wasn’t all those other people, though, but her Bucky who loved her no matter how awful she was or what she made him do for her, he just nodded agreeably and tucked his blankets around them to keep the cold out some. When she did get up in search of coffee, he squeezed her hand tight before he let her go, but went back to his book instead of offering to come with her because he knew, didn’t he, that even if Stephanie was the last of the Brooklyn Heights Rogers she could make one damn pot of coffee without three people breathing down her neck and the world wouldn’t come to an end.

“I love you,” Steph murmured, too quietly for Bucky to hear over the clang of their coffee pot as she set it down hard on the iron stove. Thank God her mam had known Winifred way back in County Clare, and thank God Auntí had thought to look for Sarah when she’d had nowhere to go.

“Thank you,” she whispered, meaning all of them and the Trinity besides.

“I don’t hate people,” she added, just in case, and smiled for real when Bucky failed to hide his startled laughter.


	6. in which Steph almost gets a makeover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's 1938, and Hannah has been going to beauty school long enough to be quite insistent about trying some of her new tricks out on her own best friend. That being Steph Rogers, it just can't be that simple.

They were still in the hallway, Bucky chuckling at Jack’s spot-on impression of George Henley reaching the end of his rope, when the too-familiar sound of Steph Rogers’ laboured wheezing became audible behind the Barnes-Rogers door.

“No,” her fiancé protested, fumbling for his keys as Jack’s voice trailed away. “Steph-”

They found her and Hannah in a crumpled heap in the living room, Stephanie sobbing for breath while her best friend rubbed her back.

“Hey,” Hannah said brightly, throwing the boys a grateful look over Steph’s shoulder as Bucky came to crouch with them. “Look who’s home, honey.”

Steph turned blindly towards him, pressing her face into his neck as soon as he took her weight.

“’m okay,” she murmured; Bucky gave a shaky kind of laugh.

“Sure y’are, Stephanín. Deep breaths, okay?”

She nodded weakly, closing her eyes as she concentrated on matching her breathing to his. Jack held his hand out to his sister, jerking his head towards the other two as he pulled her to her feet and into a reassuring hug.

“What happened, Han?”

She shrugged helplessly, her voice tremulous with the threat of tears.

“I dunno- it was the hairspray, maybe. She was fine until just now.”

Bucky’s good hand traced Steph’s powdered cheek.

“She finally talked you into tryin’ this out, huh.”

Hannah had been talking about makeovers for weeks now- Millie had succumbed weeks ago, and showed no signs of regretting it. In some ways, Bucky figured, it had only been a matter of time. Steph's shoulders heaved. 

“’m sorry.”

Bucky frowned.

“What’ve you got to be sorry for?”

“I wanted to-”

She broke off, coughing violently, but drew another shuddering breath and tried again. “I just wanted to look nice for you.”

Jack sank wordlessly into a chair at the dining table, running a hand through his hair as he struggled to find anything helpful to say. His sister, restless with guilt and frustration in equal parts, was fussing with the kettle. Ignoring the pair of them, Bucky eased Steph closer so he could touch his lips to the faintly sticky ringlets at her temple.

“Job done, then, okay? You don’t need any’a this stuff for that.”

She shook her head, shoulders shaking as she cried. Both of her hands were clenched about his shoulders.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Do what, a chroí?”

“Make like you don’t care that I’m not-”

“You callin’ me a liar, Steph Rogers?”

She wasn’t, not really, but- Steph gestured helplessly towards the dining table, where Hannah was now playing nervously with a stray ringlet from her own elegant updo.

“We thought you’d like it.”

Bucky kissed her again, this time squarely on the nose.

“As well, not instead. You’d be pretty as a picture even if you shaved your head and dressed in gunny-sacks for the rest of your life.”

Steph’s laughter was raw and probably painful, but she tilted her head so she could kiss her fiancé properly.

“You’re so stupid,” she grumbled, trailing her knuckles down Bucky’s cheek and smiling when he leaned comfortably into the touch. “How do you always know what to say?”

Bucky grinned, laying it on thick because anything more sincere would be too much for company.

“Guess I’m just that good, doll.”

She swatted irritably at his arm, fully recovered now, and they scrambled gracelessly to their feet as the kettle screamed.

“Tea,” Hannah announced, which was as Irish an apology as Bucky had ever known; Jack clapped his shoulder in a bracing, sympathetic kind of way as they drank it to show that there were no hard feelings. Later, though, when the Millers were safely back in their own apartment and Steph had washed all the toxic gunk out of her bright hair, Bucky frowned at the wistful way she was studying her own reflection.

“It’s not worth it, Steph.”

She cocked her head, neither agreeing with nor objecting to his assessment.

“Don’t you ever wish you were goin’ with a normal girl?”

Bucky raised an eyebrow; when he spoke, his voice was harsher than he had intended.

“Don’t you ever wish you weren’t stuck with a cripple?”

Steph’s expression froze- then she turned, crossed the room, and grabbed him almost roughly by both shoulders.

“Never. Not for one second.”

Bucky bent forward, just a little, so her damp hair brushed his forehead.

“Me neither.”

“It’s not the same thing,” his fiancée protested, but Bucky shook his head.

“It’s exactly the same. All in all the way, right, isn’t that what you said?”

Steph’s eyes widened in recognition. One of her hands came up as though involuntarily to cup his cheek.

“I didn’t think you’d remember that.”

Bucky didn’t even smile.

“Steph Rogers,” he said in a voice so solemn that it was almost a warning. “I promise you, okay- I’m never, ever, going to forget that, and nothing you do or don’t do to your hair has one hope in Hell of changing that.”

For a long moment, Stephanie just looked at him, her slender fingers still framing one side of Bucky’s face.

“Charmer,” she whispered eventually, both accusing and admiring, and then kissed him, hard, by way of making it a mutual promise.


	7. in which Bucky gets sick instead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steph hates it when she's sick and Bucky has to look after her. She hates it a lot more when Bucky's sick and won't let her look after him. (early 1938, when Bucky is 18 and Steph 17 and a half, and Gary is running the show because that's what you do when your closest friend is contagious and lives with a girl who has no immune system to speak of.)

“Gary! Is he serious? What am I supposed to do with this, huh?”

Gary had to laugh- the note in Steph’s hands could not have been written by anyone but her fiancé.

 _At G’s,_ it said, like Gary was the only person in Brooklyn Heights whose name started with a G. _Sweet dreams, sweet girl. JBB._

“I like that he thinks you need all three of his initials to know who wrote that.”

Steph rolled her eyes, but her scowl had already softened. She fell into step with him, heading for his apartment block instead of back towards her own, and smiled knowingly as she sized up the groceries he’d run out to the Miller’s store to get for that evening.

“Chicken noodle tomorrow, huh.”

“Mom says that’s the only thing for it.”

Steph knew that already, though- Gary was pretty sure she’d been on the receiving end of his mother’s tonic soups more often than everyone in the Richards clan added up.

“It’s good,” she offered, softly enough for Gary to know she was really upset but didn’t want to show it. That was the kind of thing he knew, now, after they’d so nearly lost Bucky in that god-damned accident.

“Hey,” he muttered, elbowing her gently. “He’s fine, Steph. It’s just that thing everyone at work’s got.”

She nodded unhappily.

“He said that. It wasn’t so bad yesterday.”

“It’s not that bad now,” Gary promised, because it was a damn shame to see the poor girl so shaken up over a stupid cough, even if Bucky did sound like he was about to hack up half a lung at any second. “He’ll be home in no time, sweetheart.”

“He should be home _now,_ ” she hissed, and Gary winced internally at the unexpected anger in Steph’s voice. “He should be home, and it should be _me_ looking after him instead’a your mam, and he shouldn’t have to leave goddamn notes around the place because he’s scared I’ll keel over if he looks at me while he’s sick.”

“Look, Steph-“

“I know,” she muttered, too exhausted to be called resigned. Bucky had looked that way as well, asking to stay over, and both Gary and his mam had known it was a whole separate wretchedness from his actual illness. “I know, okay? He’s tryin’a do what Doc Michaels said, and all that. It’s only-”

She caught his eye, then, and it was all Gary could do not to drag her into a hug at the first glassy hint of tears in her eyes. “It’s not fair, y’know?”

“Yeah,” Gary said quietly, his voice a little thick even to his own ears. “I know, Steph.”

Their steps slowed as they reached the apartment- poor Stephanie looked more lost than Gary had seen her in months.

“I guess I should-“

“Come say good night,” Gary suggested. “You’ll both sleep better, I bet, and with my mom right there even that idiot won’t be tempted to try anything you’ll both regret tomorrow.”

“Gary Richards,” Steph protested, properly mortified by the suggestion he’d barely made; she was still laughing when he opened the door. Bucky, still more or less visible under the quilts Gary’s mother had piled on top of him, paled as if he’d seen a ghost.

“Steph! I-“

“I know,” she interrupted, but very gently. “I’ll stay over here, okay?”

He nodded unhappily, and Gary thought Steph looked visibly calmer in the face of such clear evidence that Bucky hated their enforced separation too. “Thanks, J.”

He looked so genuinely surprised at that that Gary’s mam leaned over and smacked his arm in fondly mocking reprimand.

“Silly boy, do you really think this girl doesn’t know that everything you do is for her?”

He looked away, bashful as a kid at his first hop. Gary sighed like his life was much harder than it was.

“Say good night to your girl, Buck.”

“He did,” Steph offered, apparently unable to resist defending her boy even when she had been his chief accuser. “Wrote me a note and everything.”

She set her jaw like she was getting ready for a fight, then darted around Gary to reach the couch and take Bucky’s fever-flushed face in her hands.

“You make them come get me if you need me, understand? Don’t you dare stay away if I can help.”

Bucky’s good hand emerged from the mass of blankets to circle one of her wrists.

“I love you,” he said, in English and everything. “I’ll be fine, Steph, okay?”

She looked prepared to argue, but couldn’t stay sullen with Bucky right there smiling up at her. “Oíche mhaith, a chroí.”

Steph kissed his forehead, rolling her eyes when he tried to protest.

“Hush,” she ordered. “Feel better, okay?”

He nodded like it was a solemn duty, now that she’d been the one to ask. Gary rolled his eyes at him, totally affectionate, and beamed unrepentantly when both Bucky and Steph bristled defensively.

“We’ll keep an eye on him,” he promised. “No shenanigans, I mean that.”

“You always mean it _before_ ,” Steph complained; Gary shot his mam a betrayed kind of look when she hooted with approving laughter. Both kids looked distinctly better, though, by the time Steph pressed Bucky’s hand between hers again and said good night one final time before thanking Gary’s mam very seriously on both their behalves. It only took one pleading look from Bucky for Gary to ‘decide’ that if he was going to see Steph to the door he really might as well see her safely home.

“You don’t have to do that,” she protested automatically, but didn’t complain when he did. Gary thought he understood, maybe- Hannah and Millie had done their absolute best to make sure she’d never had to go home to that empty apartment in the months they’d spent unsure of whether Bucky would ever make it home, but even with all four of them doing their best they couldn’t be there _every_ night.

“It’s not like that,” he said without thinking. “He’s _fine_ , Steph- he’ll be right back in your way in 24 hours, tops.”

Steph reached up, bracing herself with a hand on his shoulder because Gary was after all a good couple inches taller than she was used to, and kissed his cheek.

“Thank you,” she said, simple and solemn. “Really. From both of us.”

“Naw,” he muttered, trying not to think that he must look at least as green as Bucky had before, scuffing his shoes on the floor in his embarrassment. “You know I love that kid like my own brother, Steph, right?”

He could have said more, probably, but she was too classy by half to make him.

“I know,” Steph admitted, locking the gate between them specifically because she knew Bucky would want to know that Gary had seen it done securely. “That’s why I put up with your stupid shenanigans.”

She smiled at his startled, surprised look. “Look after my Bucky, okay?”

Gary offered her a salute that was as correct as he knew how to make it, and laughed when she rolled her eyes and slammed the screen door in response.

“She’s fine,” Gary assured his friend in response to Bucky’s wordless, worried look. “Misses you already, but I guess that’s to be expected when you separate conjoined twins, right?”

He pulled a face at the same time as Bucky. “Not that she’s your sister, I mean. Sorry, forget I said that.”

“I’ll try,” Steph’s fiancé grumbled, still coughing violently. Gary clapped him on the shoulder, gently in deference to his present illness, and went to stick some honey in hot water in the vague hope that at least one of them would get some sleep that night.


	8. in which Bucky has a scare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1935/6, just a quiet day when things don't quite go right, until they do

Bucky paused in the doorway, surprised to find his long-time fiancée curled up on the sofa which was also his bed. She was supposed to be at Hannah’s, he was sure.

“Steph?”

She didn’t even stir. Bucky crept closer, ignoring the sudden thudding of his heart. “You okay, Stephanín?”

He knew she wasn’t when she failed to answer- even when she was too sick to talk Steph slept like a night watchman on duty, jerking awake at every sound louder than a sneeze. A wayward thought jumped to mind without any kind of warning: they hadn’t been able to wake her mam, either.

“Please,” Bucky whispered, struggling to keep his voice steady. “Steph, for god’s sake-“

At last, _at last_ , she raised her head.

“Bucky? What’s-”

He was at her side in a second, on his knees by the sofa so he could put his arms carefully around her and cling as hard as he dared.

“Steph, Stephanie, god.”

He didn’t know when he’d started crying, either.

She pressed her forehead to his, the closest they could get to a proper hug in that position.

“You’re okay,” Steph promised, smiling as her hands trailed down his back the way he did with her whenever her goddamn asthma caught up with them. “Deep breaths, Bucky, remember?”

He tried to laugh, but maybe they _were_ switching places for real- his chest was tight, his vision greying even as he fought to keep watching her face.

“I don’t- I-“

“Hey.”

Stephanie slid off the sofa altogether, moving to sit with her back against it so she could tug Bucky closer. “Easy, a Shéamais. Just breathe in slow- like this, with me. Yeah.”

She was playing with his hair, casual like she hadn’t really noticed she was gently tapping the beat of every breath against the side of his head. “That’s better, isn't it?”

Bucky nodded against her neck. I would die without you, he thought.

“You didn’t answer,” he said instead. She didn’t seem to understand, so he took a deep breath and finished the thought. “Your mam didn’t answer either, that time.”

Steph went still for a second, breath leaving her lungs in a gasp before she grabbed Bucky’s shoulder to keep him still long enough to kiss his cheek.

“I promise I'm just tired, J.”

He nodded. She’d had a couple of difficult nights- of course she needed to make up for it. When Steph lifted a hand to his cheek Bucky was forced to realise that his eyes were still streaming.

“’m sorry. I dunno what I-“

“Shh, shh.”

Steph’s arm tightened around his shoulders, leaving Bucky to wonder yet again how such a fragile slip of a girl could be so strong when it counted. The hand on his face pressed him closer so she could keep petting his hair while he rested his cheek against her shoulder.

“You’re okay,” Steph promised, just like Bucky did when she needed to hear it; he could hear the smile in her voice. “I’m okay too. Everything’s fine, Bucky, okay?”

“I love you,” he whispered, half expecting her to laugh at him for thinking he had to announce like that. Instead, Steph touched her lips to his face the way Bucky did when he was feeling brave- except she missed his temple by a little bit and ended up giggling affectionately against his eyebrow.

“Sorry!”

There was a hunger in her eyes he’d never seen before. “C’mere, will you?”

And then she was kissing him, for real, not like ‘peace be with you’ but like ‘one day I’m gonna be your wife,’ and Bucky didn’t know how to do anything but give as good as he got. He pulled away too soon, breathing still all out of rhythm but keenly aware that they had to get some space between them before his mother made it home.

“Steph, my mam’s gonna-“

“Let her,” Stephanie snapped, strangely fierce. She was still holding onto him, fingers digging into his shoulders like she thought someone might actually physically try to take Bucky from her. “She doesn’t like it she can tell me herself.”

She sounded so sure that Bucky had to stop fretting to kiss her again, just quickly.

“You sayin’ you’d fight my mam for me, Steph Rogers?”

She smiled, but Bucky didn’t think she was kidding about any part of it.

“I’m saying I’ll fight anyone who tries to keep you from me, Bucky Barnes.”

That wasn’t fair, he thought- muttering about proper distance wasn’t really the same as opposing anything outright- but Bucky couldn’t do anything about the way that quiet vow warmed him all through. His cheeks were hot by the time he smiled again, but on the other hand he and Steph were at least side by side on the sofa instead of nearly under it, and she was already curling comfortably into his side, safe and warm and still holding his hand.

“There," she murmured contentedly, resting her cheek against his chest as their legs tangled under Bucky’s thin blanket. “You sure you’re okay?”

As long as you are, he thought; instead of answering, he kissed her eyebrow instead of her cheek and laughed when she smacked him in exaggerated long-suffering.


	9. in defence of Joe Rogers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just a normal day in 1935, unfortunately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> because  
> 1\. I resent recent editorial developments enough that I wondered briefly whether I was done with fic because…can you still do fic when you categorically refuse to deal with canon?  
> 2\. for some reason it particularly bothered me that their plot device of choice for this allegedly innovative decision was 'abusive Irish drunk' because jeez that's never been done before  
> 3\. I just really like Joe and Sarah Rogers, okay? Stupid comics why you gotta hate so hard on happy marriages

“-over heels for that boy- James, is it?”

Mrs. Margaret Olsen, the new choir-mistress at St Charles, bustled into the chapel weighed down by a stack of hymnals almost too high for her to see over. Her accompanist, an attractive dark-haired woman Steph knew by sight but not by name, held the door but made no other move to assist. “I’m sure they call him something else at school.”

Mostly out of sight behind the confessional, Steph bent her head and tried to focus on the mysteries she was supposed to be contemplating instead of eavesdropping on someone’s private conversation. There were other kids called James, anyway, and nearly everyone had some kind of nickname.

“Bucky Barnes,” the organist confirmed, and Steph’s grip on her mother’s rosary tightened protectively at the chilly disapproval in the near-stranger’s voice. “I wouldn’t let my girls get too close to that one.”

As the choir-mistress tittered nervously, Steph breathed an apology, wholly meant, and crossed herself to end her prayer.

“Why on earth not, Pat? He seems like a good kid.”

Steph’s head bobbed in near-involuntary agreement, but the other woman- _Pat-_ only scowled.

“So far. You know what those people are like- by the time he’s eighteen he’ll be blind drunk more often than not.”

Steph, still kneeling, glanced towards the sacristy just in case another door had miraculously appeared while she’d been distracted. Her chest was tight, and her face was too hot- if it was going to turn into an attack she hoped it could wait until she got home.

“He’s just a boy,” Mrs. Olsen protested- which wasn’t Steph’s only objection, but was true enough on its own. The organist looked at her friend almost pityingly.

“Fifteen’s old enough for a lot of things- how d’you think his mother wound up raising two teenagers on her own?”

Not like _that_ , Steph wanted to scream, but for some reason her tongue was heavy in her mouth. Mrs. Olsen, at least, was scowling too now.

“It’s a fine thing, what she’s doing for that girl,” she said firmly.

“Fair enough,” even Pat had to admit, but her voice was grudging and still edged with disdain. “I’m just saying there’d be fewer Irish orphans filling our poorhouses if they’d _try_ to keep from thrashing their women and drowning themselves in gin.”

Stephanie stood up so fast she sent a whole stack of prayer books flying, but she never so much as thought about helping to set them right again.

“Evening,” she choked, looking only at Mrs. Olsen. “I’m- I’m just going.”

She was gone before either of them gathered their wits enough to say a word. In her mind’s eye Steph had pictured herself walking home quite calmly, concentrating on her posture because Doc Haley thought it might help with her asthma. Instead, she was jogging by the time she turned the corner onto their block and as close to sprinting as she ever got by the time she burst in on her poor startled Bucky.

“‘m okay,” Steph gasped as he shot to his feet, already anticipating that he might have to run for help. “I’m fine, I just-“

She paused, smiling for the first time in what felt like a while. “Wanted to see you, you know?”

Bucky still looked tense and nervy, but he caught her hand when she reached for him.

“Here I am, I guess. Did something happen at church?”

Steph nodded, but when she tried to tell him the words wouldn’t come. They stood like that for a little bit, just holding hands, until Bucky turned and headed for the kitchen without letting Steph go.

“Let’s get you some water, okay?”

He poured himself a glass as well, then touched his to her one like it was a toast. Steph felt her shoulders tense all over again.

“You wouldn’t, though. If that was beer or something.”

“What?”

Of course he wouldn’t, though- or Jack or Hannah, and they _lived_ above their local, and their da who owned it had never once raised a hand against his wife or kids.

“You remember my da, right, a bit?”

Bucky still looked like he had no idea which way was up, but he nodded with a slow, sad smile.

“Sure. You been missin’ him today?”

He looked so ready to miss Joe Rogers too, just so she wouldn’t have to be alone, that Steph had to set her glass down to put her arms around him.

“Bucky,” she whispered gratefully; instead of answering, he crossed his wrists at her waist and kissed her forehead. “He wasn’t ever drunk, was he?”

He looked confused first, then insulted.

“Of course not. Steph, what’s going on?”

“My mam never drank at all,” Steph muttered, knowing he still had no context but unable to stop thinking about it. “Except at Christmas sometimes, maybe, an’ your mam-“

Her eyes slid towards the half-full bottle of gin on the high shelf next to the stove. That didn’t count, though, she was pretty sure- they’d had that same bottle for a couple years by then. “That’s only sometimes, right?”

“Right.”

Bucky’s voice was harder now, but of course Steph knew it wasn’t her he was angry at. “Someone give you a hard time ‘bout that or what?”

She should tell him it was mostly him they’d been giving a hard time, maybe, but just like while it had been going on Steph found herself struggling to make enough sense of any of it to react. She nuzzled closer, taking comfort in the soft, reassuring weight of his hands, warm and steady at her back.

“He didn’t hit her,” Steph whispered, knowing too well that there were tears flooding the insistent whine of her voice. “He _didn’t_ , okay? He wouldn’t ever have done anything like that.”

Bucky didn’t say anything at all for a bit, but it seemed to Steph that he tightened his grip a bit.

“What idiot tried to tell you _that_?”

He kissed her cheek, then touched his forehead to hers so they’d be looking into each other's eyes if only Steph would open hers. “If it was Maxwell and those punks again I swear to god I’ll break his arm this time.”

“No,” Steph said immediately, sliding one hand up Bucky’s neck and into his hair just in case she had to keep him tethered to her by force. “They blacked your eye last time, J. An’ it wasn’t them, anyway, it was some church ladies.”

Under other circumstances she would have laughed at his poor gobsmacked look.

“I know,” she muttered, suddenly very tired. “Can we sit?”

She’d meant at the table that was right in front of them, but followed willingly when Bucky chose the sofa instead. They sat too close together, touching almost all the way from knee to hip, but it only took a second for Bucky’s faintly anxious look to morph into resolution.

“They weren’t even talking _to_ me,” Steph offered as he let his arm fall around her shoulders. “They were just saying we should all get our act together and stop being drunken bullies so they wouldn’t have to raise our kids.”

Bucky clicked his tongue, expression unforgiving.

“Not sure that makes it better, Steph.”

She found she wasn’t sure, either. They sat in silence for a while.

“Listen,” Bucky ventured softly. “Your da was the best guy anybody knew, Steph, okay? They all say that- your mam, and mine, and Sarah and Father Keats, even, remember?”

They hadn’t even had to ask, that time- the only time they’d ever met her parents’ long-time friend from back home in Dublin he’d swept Steph and her mam in a huge bear hug and told them how much he missed their Joe too.

“I know,” Steph muttered, but that dismissive tone was still still scraping against her memory like nails on a chalkboard. “But she was so _sure_ , just because we’re-“

“Who cares what she thinks, Steph?”

He was tense with resentment, now, the hand that had been resting on her shoulder tightening until his grip was very nearly painful. Bucky looked faintly alarmed when she squirmed, though, so Steph readjusted herself by moving back so she could rest her cheek on his shoulder instead of pulling away.

“’m okay,” she said again. “I love you, Bucky Barnes, okay?”

She was grinning by the time he’d touched his lips to her temple.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Steph murmured, closing her eyes for a moment. He’d never hurt her either, she knew without having ever needed to think about it, and if he ever did get drunk it’d be Gary’s fault, and that guy was all Yankee at least three generations back. “You’re just- you, you know?”

“Not really,” Bucky grumbled, but cuddled her closer. “Tá mo chroí istigh ionat, a Mhaíre.”

Steph pressed a kiss to his shoulder, smiling a little.

“Maybe they’re jealous,” she thought out loud- there was no way to say that kind of thing in English that sounded half as real. “Do you know Emmie Olsen, from school?”

Bucky shook his head curiously, brow furrowing protectively.

“Is her mam the one who-”

“No, her mam seems nice. Apparently she’s in love with you. Emmie, I mean, not her mam.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve never met her,” Bucky objected, thoroughly confused.

“Yeah,” Steph murmured, feeling magnanimous because it couldn’t be Emmie Olsen’s fault she had good taste. “But it’s you, so, you know. It makes sense.”

“You make no sense at all,” Bucky complained, but readjusted his grip so that Steph could stretch her legs out next to him. “C’mere, you’re gonna get cold.”


	10. in which Steph takes a stand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> late 1936, both aged 16 (Bucky nearly 17)

Stephanie had just about screwed her eyes shut and promised herself that she would stay that way until sleep found her, migraine or no migraine, when the apartment door opened with a creak that sliced right through her every already-jangling nerve. She curled up on the sofa, clutching helplessly at Bucky’s pillow and trying vainly not to tense up in the way Doc Michaels had already said would only make things worse in the long run. Before she had figured out how to make her lungs work again she was enveloped in a warm embrace, as cautious as it was experienced, and Bucky was rubbing her shoulders with knowing, determined hands as he breathed barely-audible apologies into her hair.

“Hey,” Steph whispered, smiling a little when her voice came out loud enough for him to hear on the first attempt. She opened her eyes a crack so she could see him smile in relief.

“Hey yourself. What’re you doing out here in the draught, huh?”

It wasn’t that cold, but since that time Steph had caught a chill which had turned quickly into full-blown pneumonia Bucky never liked to take any kind of chance.

“I wanted to see you, y’know?”

Mr Travers had asked the boys to help with some delivery or other, and it wasn’t like any of them could think of turning down extra pocket money, so Bucky had been up and out of the house almost before dawn. After that he’d had to go to school, and then he and Jack had been in back of the Millers’ bar for a bit, and Steph had been afraid that if he’d come home to find her behind the closed door his mother hated for him to breech then she wouldn’t see him at all until the next day, and that was assuming the Travers didn't need him then too. Bucky laughed, but the look in his eyes said he knew just what Steph meant.

“Here I am, sweet girl.”

He kissed her so gently it only kind of counted, then adjusted his grip so he could stand up with her still clinging to him if that was what they decided on. “You want I should take you to bed or what?”

Steph’s eyes flew wide just as Bucky realized what he’d said.

“I mean- Steph, I-”

He clutched her closer as Steph’s helpless gasp of laughter turned into a ragged cough. “Easy, easy. You’ll make yourself sick, a chroí.”

He looked so mortified that Steph just _had_ to kiss him, beaming from ear to ear as her fingers interlocked behind his neck.

“I love you,” she breathed against his lips. Bucky was flushed right to the roots of his hair, but he was giggling right along with her.

“Thank God for that, huh? Jeez, if my mam heard that-”

“Shh.”

It wasn’t _fair_ how Fred’s frowning and sighing could take all the light out of Bucky’s eyes when he hadn’t done one thing wrong. “Take me to bed, a Shéamais.”

He choked all over again, but Bucky had never once made a promise he didn’t mean to keep.

“There,” he murmured, tucking Steph’s blankets around her like he was wrapping a parcel for the mail. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

Feeling suddenly stronger than she had all day, Steph reached up to loop her arms around his neck again.

“Stay,” she murmured, watching his eyes so she’d know when to back off. “Missed you all day, Buck.”

To her surprise, and probably to Bucky’s too, that was all it took. He glanced at the door for a second, but when it failed to say one word against their choice he shrugged, just a little, and slid under the covers quickly enough to minimize the chill Steph was pretty sure was mostly in his head.

“Just ‘til you fall asleep, okay?”

“’Course.”

The last thing Steph wanted was for Bucky to imagine that anything he did for her was less than enough. “Thanks, J.”

He was already curling around her carefully, probably trying to figure out exactly how to share all the warmth he could without actually giving his mother a heart attack.

“This okay?”

He stiffened, surprised, when Steph closed the gap he’d left between them to rest her cheek against his chest- but after a moment sighed quietly and folded his arms around her again.

“Wicked girl,” he grumbled, kissing her hair before Steph could worry that she’d taken things too far. “Sleep, Stephanín.”

She kissed his collar-bone by way of promising to try, and was still trying to stay focused on the thudding of his heart instead of the pounding in her head when she finally fell asleep.

It was morning before Steph knew it- she opened her eyes to find the sunlight already casting slatted shadows across the room. Her headache had finally run its course, and she spent a full five seconds reveling in _not_ being able to feel every nerve ending in her body before she wondered why she was still so warm and glanced down curiously to find Bucky’s arm still thrown over her waist.

Steph sat up so quickly it left her breathless.

“Bucky,” she whispered urgently- and then froze again as she realized first that he’d never shut the door behind them the night before and then that his mother was already at the table across the room. Winifred’s expression was unreadable, her eyes trained on her son’s face as she sipped her coffee.

“Morning,” she murmured before Steph found her voice. “I take it you’re feeling better.”

“He stayed ‘cos I asked him,” Steph whispered, torn between defending Bucky’s intentions and shutting right up before she woke him in the middle of a scene that might well scar him for life. “Just for a bit, he said, but- I mean- he must’ve been so tired after-”

“You don’t have to protect him, you know.”

Steph’s godmother glanced away for a moment, apparently distracted by a distant siren. When she spoke again, it was in a voice so low and tired that Steph almost missed it altogether. “He’s still my boy.”

“I know that,” Steph protested. “He knows it too, Auntí.”

Fred looked highly skeptical, but all she did was frown reproachfully at Bucky’s hand, resting as casually as anything over Steph’s hip.

“What time did you get to bed?”

Steph shrugged helplessly- until Bucky had come home she had been too miserable to pay any kind of attention to the time.

“Late, I thought. ‘s why he’s so out of it, maybe.”

Her godmother nodded pensively.

“He worries about you.”

That much Steph had known for years.

“I’m sorry,” she offered, not entirely sure what she was apologizing for. Winifred smiled, more resigned than amused.

“He’s not.”

Steph found herself smiling back, remembering the pure tenderness with which he’d got her settled the night before.

“Guess not.”

Bucky’s mam nodded, apparently considering the evidence. For a long time, neither of them said another word- then Fred got to her feet with another weary sigh.

“Time and tide,” she muttered, meaning that she had to go or she’d be late for work. “Tell that boy I love him, all right?”

The tension in her voice could have choked a whole crowd of onlookers.

“He knows that too."

“As well he should. Stay warm, a thaisce.”

And then she was gone, shutting the door behind her as quietly as humanly possible. It didn’t really matter, though- Bucky’s eyes were open before the lock clicked. He’d been awake for at least half of that conversation, Steph thought, and maybe more than that.

“Thanks,” he murmured groggily, tugging Steph gently back down to lie with him. “My brave girl, all ready to save me from my own mam.”

“’Course I am, “Steph promised. They’d have to talk about it later, if the frown already marring Bucky’s expression was any indication- but he was so close, and so warm, and for the first time in what felt like days Steph could feel more than just the painful thrumming of her own blood in poorly-manufactured veins. “Anyone else, too.”

Feeling very bold, she kissed him right on the lips.

“Quiet, you. It’s early still.”

“Bossy,” Bucky murmured, but made no move to escape her clutches. Steph closed her eyes decisively, smiling to herself as one of Bucky's hands slid slowly up into her hair.


	11. in which Bucky is magic, or Steph is losing it, or both

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 1939

When Bucky got home, Steph was still curled up on her side under the thin sheet which was all he’d dared to give her while her temperature was so high. She had her knees drawn up to her chest as if she was trying to brace herself against the painful hacking cough that seemed to have developed from the damp wheezing of the previous night.

“Hey, sweet girl.”

Bucky’s voice sounded wrecked even to him, but it was enough. Steph smiled faintly, unbending a little as if trying to make room for him.

“C’mere.”

He’d never need telling twice- Bucky bent to kiss her forehead, then lay down obediently so Steph could collapse across his chest with a whimper that very nearly brought tears to Bucky’s eyes.

“Poor Stephanie,” he muttered, working his good hand carefully into her tangled hair. Her skin was warm to the touch, but she was still shivering like she’d spent half the day outside and barefoot. “Has it been like this all day?”

She nodded miserably, sighing quietly in the vicinity of his shoulder.

“Aw, Steph.”

He held her as close as he dared, letting his hand trail down her neck so he could rub her shoulders for a bit. “I’m sorry, honey.”

“’s not _your_ fault.”

Another ugly cough stopped their conversation for a while.

“Bucky,” Steph rasped afterwards, scowling fiercely but too worn out by the attack to finish the thought.

“I know,” Bucky promised, touching his lips to her temple and wishing with his whole being that there was something, anything, he could do to make the whole thing easier on her. “I know, sweetheart.”

Her lips brushed his shoulder like Steph had somehow decided that Bucky was the one who needed comforting while she was exhausted, frustrated and in pain.

“’s not so bad when you’re here.”

If that was true, Bucky wasn’t sure he could afford to leave her side ever again.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Swallowing a shaky sigh, he turned his head to kiss her hair and smiled when Steph nuzzled closer in response. He was still stroking her hair, scared to breathe too hard in case he jostled her somehow, when his stomach growled loudly enough to startle both of them. “What the-”

Stephanie lifted her head to flash a perfectly delighted grin at him before she kissed him full on the lips.

“Stupid boy.”

Bucky was almost sure he was blushing like a schoolgirl, but it was hard to feel bad about it with Steph looking suddenly livelier than he’d seen her in days. “Of course you came straight in here. C’mon- Sarah’s left us enough soup to feed half the block.”

He wasn’t at all sure Steph should be getting out of bed, but having _just_ promised not to leave her alone Bucky saw no alternative to letting her tug him to his feet. In the kitchen, he slung his arm around her, ostensibly to keep her warm, while Steph went about the work of portioning soup. She filled one mug instead of two, but took a long, slow sip before offering it to him.

“We can share, right?”

“’Course.”

They shared everything else, after all; Bucky kissed her cheek before accepting the mug. Sarah’s homemade broth was rich and warming, presumably just the thing for a long convalescence in the dead of winter. Again. Bucky suppressed another sigh, looking up to find Stephanie watching his face with rapt, misty-eyed attention.

“What is it? What can I-“

“Shh.”

She put both arms around his waist like they were suddenly six again. “’m just looking.”

“Oh.”

He set the mug down on the counter behind her so he could grasp her shoulder gently by way of returning the embrace. “Go ahead, I guess.”

Steph smiled sweetly.

“I think you’re magic, a Shéamais.”

Bucky frowned.

“C’mere, I think your temperature is-“

“Shh, I said.”

She brought one hand up to his cheek, and suddenly there was nothing childish about the way they were standing. “I’m not delirious, okay?”

Bucky wasn’t altogether sure Steph was qualified to make that kind of promise, but even though she was still looked like she needed about four days’ sleep she wasn’t _that_ warm.

“I’m just feeling better. Because you’re here, and you’re magic, like I said.”

“You’re a crazy person,” Bucky complained, but Steph’s eyes, shining with mirth, were as clear and lucid as they’d ever been as she pressed her lips to his.

“Thank you,” she murmured, then kissed him again before he could object. “Mo ghrá thú, a chéadsearc.”

They turned together as the front door opened with its usual grinding creak.

“Well,” Millie Travers said slowly. “I’m gonna go ahead and guess that you’re feeling better since this afternoon.”

Steph beamed.

“See,” she cried, tangling her fingers together with Bucky’s as she glared playfully.

“So she says,” Bucky agreed reluctantly. “Personally I think she’s just losin’ it at last.”

“He’s so charming,” Millie drawled. “Remind me again why you keep this one around?”

“She’s gonna say it’s ‘cos-“

“Because he’s magic,” Steph interrupted firmly. “And because he’s mine, so where the hell else is he gonna go if he’s not with me?”

Bucky thought that was a pretty good question, but he still kissed her forehead, just in case. Steph smacked his arm irritably.

“It’s _not_ the fever, okay?”

“Fine,” Bucky grumbled. She was still trembling intermittently, and looked so tired that he was pretty sure she’d be asleep before the hour was up. As long as she continued to smile like that, though, and to lean into him like she never planned to move again, Bucky decided he could put up with a little madness on top of all the rest of it. “Whatever you say, Miss Rogers, ma’am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one partly just to reassure myself that I can still write fic. I know it's been a while! I've been uh changing careers, countries and everything that goes with both of those so I haven't has as much time as I'd like for S&J adventures. I'll get back into the swing of things soon though I hope! <3


	12. in which Steph is scared

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> another difficult evening, late 1937

Ten minutes, Steph thought desperately, fumbling with the kettle as she fought to set up her inhaler before her legs gave up supporting her. She just had to make it _ten minutes_ , and then Bucky would be home. He’d know what to do- he always knew what to do.

The earthenware jar slipped through her fingers, smashing against the floor with a tinkling crash that sent broken glass and ceramic bits flying- and scalding balsam-scented water splashing all over Stephanie’s calves. The pain made her gasp- or would have, if her burning lungs had been in any state to allow it.

“No,” Steph choked, staggering back to collapse into the nearest chair. “No, please-“

Her vision was greying already, fading in and out as she struggled to stay focused on the clock on the shelf. She couldn’t do it, she realized abruptly- even for Bucky she couldn’t _make_ herself breathe if her lungs wouldn’t let her. Her eyes lit on her sketchbook, still open where she’d been working before her chest had seized up as it just sometimes did. Steph closed a shaky hand around the pencil she’d dropped earlier.

 _I’m sorry,_ she scrawled, tears blurring her vision at the thought of leaving him all on his own. _I lov-_

The pencil fell away as her hands began to shake. Too late, Steph realized. Too late, and too little, and now he’d-

“Hey, hey.”

She had no memory of losing consciousness, but maybe she had- somehow, anyway, she’d missed the tell-tale creak of the door altogether, so the first she knew of Bucky making it home at last was his voice just by her ear. “Don’t you quit on me, Steph Rogers.”

She never would, if it were up to her.  Steph forced her eyes open.

“Bucky,” she tried to say. He smiled just as if she’d managed it.

“Mm-hmm. Take it slow, sweet girl.”

There was an apology in his eyes- it took Steph longer than it should have to understand that he was wishing he could pull her into his arms like he’d always done before the accident.

“Don’t,” she protested. “C’mere.”

She put her arms around his neck, grateful for every point of contact as further proof that he was really there. With her help, Bucky was free to gather her close, just like they both wanted, and lean in carefully until their foreheads touched.

“That’s good.”

It did seem to be- her lungs were still screaming, but Steph already felt more like she was struggling to suck a lungful of air through a narrow straw rather than a thick tarpaulin sheet. Bucky smiled, relaxing a little as Steph’s shoulders began to unclench. “See? That’s fine. Don’t rush it, now.”

He was always so warm. Steph snuggled close with a murmur of approval as her fiancé kissed her neck, tender and encouraging.

“Poor brave girl. Just stay with me, Stephanie.”

“’m here,” she managed, smiling at the way his eyes warmed at the sound of her voice. Bucky grinned, but said nothing else- they sat quietly as Steph worked on catching her breath. When Bucky stiffened, she knew he’d noticed the mess she had made- and realized suddenly that she’d gone and broken the new inhaler he’d been so hopeful would make things easier on them both.

“Sorry,” she muttered, cheeks burning. “I know that was-“

“Shh.”

He kissed her forehead, but his voice was stern. “I don’t give one damn about that stupid thing. ‘d you get out of there in time, I mean, or should we borrow that cream Sarah got for Jack last month?”

He always, always knew what to do. Carefully, still expecting to have to fight every inch of the way, Steph breathed out slowly as she nodded. She let Bucky take her weight as the old familiar tremours set in, sighing into his shirt as he caught her close like he always, always did.

“I love you.”

She whispered it against his collar, half-hoping he wouldn’t hear. “Thank god you came, Buck.”

His good hand skimmed her cheek, swiping at a tear she hadn’t meant to let fall.

“Hey. You’re okay, Stephanie.”  

Bucky so rarely called her by her name, all of it like that, that Steph found herself raising her head instinctively. Again, his voice was fierce, but his expression was all love. “You’re just fine.”

“My hero,” Steph said quietly, much more serious than coy. Bucky smiled softly, nudging her gently into a more comfortable position.

“As if you’d ever need rescuing. Rest, okay? I’m gonna get that thing from Sarah, and-“

“No.”

She caught his hand and kissed his knuckles like the same kind of giant sap she usually accused him of being. “You stay with me, Barnes.”

There was a momentary pause, during which Steph could _see_ Bucky struggling with himself, then he shrugged a little bit and dropped gracefully to sit by her.

“Don’t ever have to tell me twice.”

Steph narrowed her eyes at her fiancé.

“You’re gonna go and get it when I fall asleep.”

Bucky smiled lop-sidedly.

“Or wait for Sarah to come see why we never made it down to dinner and ask her to send it up with Jack.”

“See,” Steph smiled, letting her eyes fall shut as Bucky began to stroke her hair with tentative, devoted fingers. “You _do_ always know what to do.”

“Steph,” he murmured, bashful in the face of such open praise.

“Hush,” she ordered, breathing easily at last. “We’re resting, Bucky.”

He kissed her cheek, and then her other cheek, and then her lips. The whole production was much more distracting than restful, but Steph decided to allow it.


	13. in which it's not enough until it is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky reacting to chapter 12. this is for leftygal, who seems to want to see the rest of that scene. I hope this is at least vaguely as desired <3

“Poor sweet Steph.”

Bucky knelt to tuck their best blankets carefully around his fiancée. It was too early to let Steph sleep through the night- she’d be restless by three in the morning and wide awake by five- but after twelve years and change he had a pretty good idea that keeping her warm and rested after an asthma attack would reduce the likelihood of a second one creeping up on them before she could handle it. He tried not to think about how _small_ she looked, curled up like a little kid and overwhelmed by the bedclothes Bucky had just laid down. “You’re okay, gorgeous girl.”

She so nearly hadn’t been, though- Bucky swallowed hard, trying to forget the image of Stephanie slumped over at their kitchen table. He’d breezed in, clueless and carefree, to find her motionless at the table, her lips almost blue. It had been all Bucky could do to stagger over and throw his one useful arm around her before his own heart had given out, but _thank God_ it hadn’t been too late.

“Thank you,” he muttered, turning to touch reverent lips to that long-beloved cheek. “Thank you. _Thank you._ Swear to-“

He paused, stymied by his own phrasing, and tried again.

“I promise I’ll take care'f her, I mean.”

Steph muttered something too garbled for anyone to understand, smiling a little without actually waking up.

“I’ve got you,” Bucky promised, just in case. “I’m gonna look after you, Steph Rogers.”

A brisk knock on the door jarred him out of their peaceful moment. Bucky straightened, out of sorts and a little on edge, but relaxed by degrees as Hannah let herself in, frowning first at his obvious disquiet and then at the mess on the far side of the kitchen. She was already reaching for the dustpan in the corner.

“Is she okay?”

“Better now. Listen, you don’t have to-”

“Hush, it’s no trouble. You two need anything else, when I bring dinner up?”

Bucky nodded gratefully.

“If there’s any of that cream left that your mam got for Jack’s hand, remember-“

“Oh no,” Hannah almost wailed, looking up from the ruins of Steph’s new inhaler. “Was that when this thing went to bits?”

It must have been, Bucky agreed, clenching his hand against the urge to pull the blankets back and check on Steph’s poor scalded shins again.

“It’s not so bad. I’ll just feel better, though, you know?”

“Of course.”

Hannah emptied the dustpan into their waste basket, then bent to retrieve a wayward pencil. She crossed the room to squeeze Bucky’s shoulder as she set Steph’s drawing things down on the table behind him. “You don’t have to explain, Buck. I’ll be back in two ticks, okay? Look after this girl, now.”

She sounded so like her mother that Bucky had to smile.

“’s what I do, isn’t it? Thanks, Hannah.”

 She shut the door with a decisive snap that startled Steph back into wakefulness.

“Shh,” Bucky murmured before she’d said a word. “’s just Hannah come to make sure we haven’t, I dunno, locked ourselves in or something.”

Stephanie smiled, sleepy and concerned and so vulnerable that Bucky’s heart beat faster just thinking about all the ways one poor sweet Steph could get hurt or sick or worse. He brushed his fingers carefully through her hair, just watching her eyes until they slipped shut again. As Stephanie dozed, Bucky reached for the sketchbook Hannah had left with him. Steph had been working on a view of the park for days, and she’d sworn up and down as he left for work that morning that she’d be done by the time he got home or nothing doing. It wasn’t the carefully detailed paving stones that caught his eye when he got there, though, but the abstract-looking scribbles on the facing page. It only took Bucky a second to realise what they were supposed to be.

“No! Steph-”

But she was asleep again, and of course Bucky wasn’t going to wake her just to upset her. He let his lips graze her cheek, whispering her name like a benediction, then padded over to the table to collapse quietly into the seat where he’d found her not a moment too soon.

“Christ,” he breathed, then backtracked immediately. “Sorry, I don’t mean that, I just-“

He couldn’t have said what he did mean, not really, but trusted them to hear it without words. A few minutes later, Jack found him still hunched over the table with his head in his hands.

“Hey,” he said quietly, setting down the huge pot his mam had sent up with him. “Burn salve for your thoughts?”

They weren’t worth that much. Bucky nodded tiredly at the sketchbook in front of him, watching Jack’s eyebrows draw together as he tried to make sense of the message.

“What’s that say, then? I’z cory, I…ks?”

Wordlessly, Bucky picked up the pencil Steph must have lost only seconds before he’d made it home and filled in the letters she hadn’t quiet managed to put to paper.

“Christ.”

Jack was already shaking his head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean-”

He gave a yelp of surprise as Bucky grabbed him in a one-armed hug, but very quickly returned the rough embrace.

“Easy,” Jack said quietly. “She’s okay. Your girl’s just fine, understand?”

“This time,” Bucky protested, but Jack shook his head fiercely.

“This time’s the only time that counts, okay? Or you’ll never have a second’s peace between you. Look over there, go on.”

He turned his head obediently, and felt his shoulders unclench a little at the sight of her, peacefully at rest and breathing as easily as she ever did.

“You see? It’s enough. Day by day, like with your arm.” 

Second by second, more like- but maybe that kind of thing was hard to grasp when you had no practice watching your best friend and only love fighting for her life on an almost daily basis.

“I guess,” Bucky muttered by way of conceding the argument without agreeing. “Thanks, Jack.”

His oldest friend, apart from Steph, squeezed his shoulder much as Hannah had done before.

“’Course. You’ll come get us if you guys need anything.”

Bucky nodded, mustering a smile.

“Thanks. And to your mam, yeah?”

“I’ll tell her. Get some rest yourself, y'hear me? One step at a time, Barnes.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Bucky rolled his eyes, but he was smiling by the time he shut the door. As quietly as he knew how, he crossed back to his reclaim his place by Stephanie’s side.  

“It’s enough,” he whispered, closing his eyes to turn it into a real prayer. “Just please help me be enough.”  

He didn’t know how long he stayed like that, but suddenly Steph’s other hand was brushing his cheek, revealing tears Bucky hadn’t been aware of until his fiancée stopped them in their tracks.

“I’m okay,” she said quietly. Bucky grinned a bit.

“Promise?”

She leaned out over the edge of the sofa to put her arms around his neck.

“Yes. Really and for true, Buck.”  

He kissed her a shade more insistently than he’d meant to.

“We’re not aiming for ‘okay’, though, are we?”

Steph raised an eyebrow.

“Aren’t we?”

“Of course not.”

Their lips met again.

 “We’re aiming for fantastic,” Bucky informed her, closing the gap between them with every adjective, just for emphasis. Day by day, hour by hour, kiss by kiss. “And wonderful, and marvelous, and greater than great.”

“I see.”

This time it was Steph who leaned in first. “Sounds good to me.”

Bucky grinned against her lips.

“I knew you’d be game.”

She raised a hand in a single, blessedly assured movement, and tucked a stray bit of his hair back where she wanted it.

“Clever boy.”

“’s what I am. Hush, honey girl- you’re supposed to be asleep.”

“You’re the one who keeps kissing me,” Steph pointed out, not unreasonably. Her fingers brushed his face again. “You sure you’re okay?”

Bucky nodded slowly.  

“For now.”

Which was enough, after all, or ought to be. “You know I love you, Stephanie, right?”

She laughed, soft and sure.

“ _Everyone_ knows that. There are people we’ve never even met who’ve known that for years.”

Bucky let out a long, slow breath. It could be enough. It had to be enough.

“Sounds good to me,” he decided, and kissed her palm instead of her lips.


	14. in which Steph is just just

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> late 1937

“Steph?”

She was kneeling by his bed, and had been walking her fingers slowly along his arm- the one that could still feel it- until his voice surprised her into stillness.

“Sorry,” Stephanie murmured. “I was just-“

She frowned, dropping her eyes. “Just.”  

When Bucky moved to rise she caught his shoulder- the other one, which he hadn’t quite got round to thinking about properly- and helped him sit up- slowly, carefully, like all the doctors, and Gary, and Sarah Miller, kept insisting.  

“You want some company, you think, or do you have to just just on your own?”

Maybe a year earlier- before the accident, and before his mam- Steph would have smacked him for that, or shoved at him first and then leaned in to soften it with a quick, cheeky kind of closed-mouthed kiss. No longer, though- now, her smile faltered before it widened, and her eyes shone as much with devotion as with the threat of tears.

“‘Course I want your company.”

Her fingers closed around his arm. “I’ll always want your company, you know that.”

She shouldn’t ever, ever, have to ask.

“I do know that,” Bucky promised, wishing he still had a free hand with which to tug her close. “Come sit with me, huh?”

She did, at once, resting her head on his shoulder as he tucked his blanket clumsily around her.

“That’s better. It’s too cold for kneeling on this floor, sweet girl.”

Stephanie looked rebellious for a second, but whatever she saw in Bucky’s face reassured her that he meant that generally, and wasn’t thinking specifically of asthma or cardiac arrhythmia or any number of other things that could kill her quick if one or both of them looked the other way for too long. The realization hit him like a slap in the face- suddenly, he knew exactly why Steph was on her knees and keeping an eye on him in the middle of the night.  

“Hey. I’m still here, okay?”

She nodded, glancing away- then set her jaw and let go of him to put both arms around his neck.

“You nearly weren’t. They kept saying we should prepare ourselves.”

The words were quiet, almost reluctant, but Steph relaxed against Bucky as if the confession brought bodily relief. Her shoulders shook, but the cheek she pressed to his was dry. “Like I could ever be _prepared_ , Bucky.”

He could have said he knew what that was like, maybe, but what good would that have done anyone? Instead, Bucky turned his face to kiss her hair, and then her cheek, and then- as she pulled away, concerned and curious- her lips.

“I’m so sorry, Stephanie.”

She raised her hands to frame his face, expression growing stern in a way that was quickly becoming familiar.

“Hey,” Bucky protested before they ended up replaying the whole scene again. “I didn’t say it was my fault, okay, I just said-”

“Sorry for _what_ , then, if you know it’s not on you?”

He would have liked to kiss her again, but Steph was still more in control of his head than he was so Bucky had to settle for smiling at her from between her hands.

“Not sorry _for_ , okay? I’m sorry _that_ you were scared and on your own, and that you’ve had to deal with all of this, and that-”

“Don’t. Bucky, don’t.”

This time she didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands- they sat awkwardly for a moment, just blinking at each other, then Bucky shrugged a little and caught Steph’s hand in his.

“C’mere.”

She raised an eyebrow- usually he was the one who kept up his mother’s life-long protest against undue proximity- but let him tug her down to lie with him. “It’s gotta be four in the morning by now.”

“At least.”

She adjusted herself cautiously, mindful not to trap his arm as she closed the gap between them. “You sure this is okay?”

He wasn’t, exactly- Bucky didn’t even have to close his eyes to see his mother’s face, tragic with reluctance and foreboding- but if it would keep Steph safe and warm until morning he couldn’t see how anyone upstairs would object seriously.

“Better’n one of us up here and the other on the floor, right?”

Stephanie shook her head, or tried to but gave up when she found Bucky’s whole torso in the way.

“I wasn’t gonna _stay_ there. You were thumping all over the place in here, I just wanted to check you hadn’t, I dunno, squashed your poor hand or something.”

It was the ‘or something,’ Bucky knew from personal experience, that kept one up at night.

“Well,” he murmured, tangling their fingers together. “Thanks for checking, gorgeous girl.”

“’Course.”

She was smiling by then, though, and her eyes were alight with mischief again. “At first I was checking. After that I just stayed to enjoy the view.”

“Oh.”

The streetlights caught Bucky’s grin- even at 4am it was never really dark in Brooklyn Heights. “Is _that_ what ‘just just’ means?”

Stephanie nudged his neck mock-reproachfully.

“Shut up. You’re a jerk, you know that?”  

 “Maybe. Your one, though, so there.”

And still there, for as long as they were allowed. Steph smiled against his neck.

“Best jerk in Brooklyn.”

“Hush,” Bucky murmured, refusing to open his eyes. “We’re asleep, Stephanie.”  

She pressed a little closer, closed her hand a little more firmly around his, and relaxed by degrees as she exhaled in time with him.


	15. in which no one is jealous, Evie, okay?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> winter 1932, in which Bucky is home sick and Anna Conroy doesn't like anything about it.  
> this chapter for nevrmoravnO26, in thanks for continued enthusiasm and maybe also with apologies because it didn't QUITE come out like you wanted but...my Steph doesn't really get into fights as readily as the others, I think because she either has a Bucky right there to menace people on her behalf or knows he'll get upset if she gets hurt when he's not there to stop it. in any case! for your consideration, thanks and <3

Anna Conroy wasn’t jealous, no matter what her sister Evie said. As if _anyone_ could be jealous of that little kid with her stick arms, straw plaits, and stupid cough that never really went away. She arched her back, showing off the developing curves which were already getting more attention than poor skinny Steph Rogers could ever hope for.

“He’s not gonna marry you, you know.”   

“Sure he is,” Stephanie answered without bothering to look away from the dumb old sketchbook she always seemed to have with her. “In May of ’42, remember?”

“Not likely.”

1942 was ten _years_ away- that was plenty of time for Bucky to realise his mistake. “One day he’s gonna figure out he doesn’t have to run ‘round you all day.”

This time, Steph saw fit to lower her pencil and raise her head, regarding Anna with a maddening blend of patience and curiosity.  

“Who says he does that ‘cos he _has_ to?”

Anna couldn’t see any other reason why he would.

“I bet you don’t even get that sick,” she muttered resentfully. “You just carry on like that so he can’t get away, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Stephanie’s voice was as mild as ever, but her irritation was finally beginning to show on her face. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, either.”

Anna tossed her head, feeling her way towards a victory that seemed just out of sight.

“I mean,” she said very deliberately. “That one day he’s gonna figure out that if he dates a normal girl instead’a you he won’t have to carry their books everywhere like some kind’a slave, or stay inside all day while his friends’re playing ball, or make like he wants to go to the library instead’a coming ice-skating with us, or-”

“Stop.”

Suddenly Steph was standing as tall as she could, looking far less fragile than Anna remembered ever seeing her. “Just stop. You don’t know anything about us.”

That wasn’t true, though. Anna hadn’t been at her new school two weeks before she’d grabbed her assigned deskmate by the arm and demanded all the details on the grey-eyed boy across the room. Tracy had been glad enough to introduce them, even, but in the four months they’d shared a class Bucky had never once said yes to an invitation. Which, Anna had grown increasingly sure with time, had less to do with Bucky himself than with his useless, sickly “fiancée” who never wanted to do anything fun and never let him do it either. On top of which- she saw the way forward and went for it relentlessly.

“I know he’s home sick because of you, for one thing.”

It hit a nerve, all right- Steph seemed to pale and stagger under the accusation.

“He’s not, mam says-”

“Of course he is,” Anna cut in ruthlessly. “ _You’re_ sick all the time, aren’t you, and you never let him get away.”

She did feel a little bad about the hurt showing plain on Stephanie’s face, but someone had to tell her before Bucky Barnes keeled over out of misplaced devotion.

“You better _not_ marry him, Steph Rogers, or he’ll die right there in church the first time you-”

“You take that back.”

She’d never seen Steph Rogers look so close to scary. “You take that back, he’s not gonna-”

Anna smiled, not even a little bit kindly.

“I bet he is, if you won’t let him-”

Stephanie launched herself forward with a wrathful cry.

“Shut up! Shut up, I won’t ever-”

“Get off!”

Anna only shoved her once, but after all Steph was just a little thing. She fell hard, hissing in pain as her head connected with the sidewalk- but before Anna could panic, even, she was scrambling back up and would certainly have renewed her attack if not for the frantic voice that broke in on them out of nowhere.  

“Steph! Stephanie, what-”

He caught her easily when she hurled herself at him instead of Anna. “Shh, shh. You’re gonna make yourself sick, Steph.”

She was already heaving in that ugly, wheezy way of hers, but hugged him with all her strength before pulling back to watch his face with anxious eyes.

“You’re s’posed to be in bed.”

He did look ill, Anna saw with some concern- Bucky was smiling, but his eyes were tired, and his face was pale except where it was flushed as if from exertion. He must have broken into a run when Steph had fallen, Anna realized with her first pang of real remorse.

“Got bored. Gary’s mam said I could-”

He frowned, one hand coming up to brush her hair out of her face. “Never mind that. What’s going on here, huh?”

“Nothing.”

He raised his eyebrows, playful and reproachful, but didn’t actually say he didn’t buy her half-hearted effort at answer. Bucky still hadn’t given any sign that he realized Anna was there at all. She’d never seen anyone else look like a girl like that, like they were the only ones in the room no matter how many people were watching covertly or pointing discreetly or staring outright as Steph choked for breath on the sidewalk or in the corner of a classroom or in the middle of the playground.

You’re bleeding, Stephanie.”

There was some deeper meaning in the way he said her name- Stephanie dropped her eyes, contrite.

“Sorry. I’m sorry, I just- I-”

Her voice shuddered and then broke; she hid her face against his neck. “I don’t like it when you’re sick.”

Bucky’s expression softened. He sighed quietly, bending to retrieve Steph’s sketchbook and satchel without actually letting go of her. Stephanie’s eyes darted towards Anna for a second before she made a grab for her bag.  

“I can do it.”

“I know,” Bucky admitted readily, but he didn’t let go. “C’mon, we should get you some ice or something.”

Steph only scowled at him- or at herself, maybe.

“You don’t have to look after me all the time.”

There was a momentary silence as they both considered that- then Bucky gave Steph’s shoulder a little, careful kind of shove.  

“Maybe I want to, y’ever think of that?”

Her smile was quick, and confident, and maybe even more than a little pretty once all the half-hidden anger fled her frame.

“I did think of that,” she assured him, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm like it belonged there. “I was just checking.”

Bucky tilted his head at her, which from the curve of his lips Anna guessed was a deliberate imitation of Steph at her most inquisitive.

“Guess you thought right, Steph Rogers.”

She nodded, some unspoken question answered, and tugged him gently back the way he’d come.

“C’mon, you’ll get sicker standing around out here.”

He gawked at her.

“Am _I_ the one fussing and whining about a stupid bag when we could be home and drinking hot tea by now?”

For a moment both Steph and Anna only stared.

“Fussing and- Bucky! You stupid- come back here!”

He’d already let go of her to dash away, though not so far or so fast that she would have any kind of trouble catching up even with her stick legs and that stupid cough interrupting her bright-joyful-easy laughter. Neither one of them looked back at Anna, left scuffing her shoes uncomfortably against the curb until her sister laid a hand, sympathetic but also chastising, on her arm.

“Didn’t I say-”

“Shut up,” Anna bit out, snatching up her own bag and striding away before she did something else she was already wishing she could take back. She kept her head held high because she _wasn’t_ jealous, and she _wasn’t_ sorry, and she _didn’t_ care one bit that Bucky must have let Steph catch up with him by then, somewhere just out of her peripheral vision, and would be swinging her around gleefully as she yelled at him and laughed with him and hung on tight. “Let’s go home already, I’ve been waiting half an age.”

Evie fell into step without a word, and for once in her life knew better than to offer any kind of “told you so.”


	16. in which Fred isn't being fair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1936- aftermath of that scene Loki creeped on in mad art thou in recounting, in which Bucky's mam got drunk and upset and basically announced that he was always going to be terrible at looking after family because after all he was his father's kid.

“That’s better,” Steph murmured, adjusting her godmother’s blankets partly to avoid making eye contact. Winifred squeezed her hand.

“You’re a good girl, a Mháire.”

Sure, Steph wanted to protest, but your boy’s the best there is and you can’t even-

“Good night, Auntí.”

She was most of the way across the room when Bucky’s mam spoke again, so quietly that Steph couldn’t be sure she had been meant to hear it.

“You’ll look after him for me.”  

She’d look after him for _him_ , anyway. Steph shut the door behind her, attention already on the boy they’d left on his own on the other side. Bucky was slumped over at the kitchen table with his head in his hands, beyond exhausted but too on edge to get any rest. He turned as Steph came up behind him.

“She okay?”

“Fine. Are _you_ okay?”

Bucky shrugged like he couldn’t tell for certain.  Steph rested her palms on his shoulders and bent to kiss his cheek. She wasn’t quite prepared for him to tense under her hands, squeezing his eyes shut like he was fighting tears. “Bucky-”

He pulled away, but only long enough to put his arms around her waist and breath out, slowly and painfully, almost against her breastbone. Steph shivered, fighting down a nervous giggle that could too easily scare him off, and smoothed her fingers along the collar of his shirt so he’d know she planned to keep him close as long as he would let her.

“Sometimes I think she doesn’t like me anymore.”

Steph’s first impulse was to deny it completely, or at least shake him gently until he took it back himself- but she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t noticed Winifred’s recent tendency to vacillate between her usual possessiveness and a strange coldness that always seemed to leave Bucky caught between defensiveness, defiance and plain bewilderment. She put her arms around her fiancé, hugging him tight as if that could shield him physically from the way his mother’s eyes seemed to harden, sometimes, before she bit out some command or reproach which only months ago would have been the gentlest suggestion.

“I don’t _mean_ to remind her,” Bucky whispered, almost pleading. “I can’t help lookin’ like him, can I?”

When Steph kissed his forehead he sagged gratefully against her, gentle and affectionate but scarcely able to find a smile even as he whispered the endearments they knew better than to let his mother overhear if they could help it. He still looked more rattled than Steph had seen him in a long, long time.

“You think maybe we shouldn’t-”

“No.”

Suddenly, Steph wasn’t sad or scared or anxious anymore- she was mad, and very aware that she’d _been_ mad ever since she’d come in to find her own brave boy all pale and shaken over things that could not- _could not-_ be his fault. “You stop that right now, y’hear me?”

He shut right up, quick enough that they both heard his teeth crash together. Steph winced, dropping one hand to stroke his jaw apologetically, but kept her voice as fierce as the scowl she couldn’t seem to shake. “You’re not allowed to let her get to you like that.”

Bucky was watching her closely, wide-eyed and vulnerable like only his mother knew how to leave him.

“I just meant-”

“I know what you meant.”

It was written in every line of his poor worried frown. “It doesn’t work like that, Bucky. I love you, all right? What else do we need?”

He smiled, but it didn’t lift his spirits like she’d thought it would.

“She does too, you know. Love him, I mean- still, now.”

His eyes were fixed on the door that separated them from his mother. “You think she ever wishes she’d just stayed with him?”

Steph closed her eyes against the burn of tears.

“Bucky-”

“Maybe he’da looked after her, right? It’s only me he didn’t want.”

His voice wavered but didn’t crack. Steph pressed him closer so she could kiss him softly.

“He’s a goddamn jackass- who cares what he wants or not?”

But of course he cared, had always cared- would always care, maybe.

“I’m not like him,” Bucky insisted quietly. “I’m _not_ going to hurt you, I don’t care what she says.”

“I know,” Steph promised, watching the play of light and dark as she brushed her fingers through his hair. “Of course I know you’re nothing like that bastard.”

He laughed a little desperately, taken aback by her choice of words, but leaned in before she did to kiss her quickly, grateful and tender if still a little fraught.

“You’ve never met him, though.”  

This, she was entirely prepared for- Steph had been working out that particular answer ever since the first time she’d realized it did matter to Bucky that she had a da they both knew and he didn’t.

“I’ve met you, haven’t I?”

They were way, way too close together by Winifred’s standards- standing over him like that Steph was very nearly straddling her fiance’s lap while he clung to her. If Bucky’s mam came out of her room for anything she’d probably thrash them both herself and then wake Father Clarence to hear their emergency after-hours confession. Instead of backing off, though, Steph leaned in and took his face in her hands. “I know _you_ right down to the ground.”

She could have told him what that really meant- that he was the bravest and the best and that she’d loved him long before she’d known the words for the way his being in a room improved it right away- but Bucky seemed content to leave things there. Their lips met again, less frantically this time.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “Steph, I-”

“I _know_ , Bucky.”   

He smiled at that, reaching back to yank on her braid.

“You gonna yell at me again?”

“If it’ll help.”

He shook his head, still smiling up at her. Steph brushed his fringe out of his eyes. “You’re so tired, a rún.”   

What she really wanted was to take him by the hand and lead him to her own bed, undress him with her own hands and hang onto him until morning. His mam would have half a nervous breakdown in the morning, obviously- but maybe that would serve her right after what she’d put her son through for no reason Steph could think of. He’s _not_ like your George, Steph would tell her godmother- and her fiancé, if he needed to hear it again. He’s not, no matter how special his eyes are, and more than that _I’m_ not like _you_ , so you just leave him the hell alone because it’s _not fair_ he should always have to-

“Steph?”

He was cupping her cheek with one of his warm hands. “You skip fallin’ asleep and go straight to the dreaming or what?”

His voice was teasing, but his eyes searched hers with familiar concern.  

“I’m okay.”

She was better than okay, really- Steph leaned up to kiss him one last time just to prove it. “I love you, James B.”

He looked shy for a moment, then ducked his head to steal a kiss of his own.

“You too, my Steph.”

His eyes darted towards the door that would separate them for the night. “You gonna be warm enough in there?”

She’d be warmer if he came with her, Steph thought with a little smirk. Bucky raised an eyebrow, but didn’t ask outright.

“Nothing. I just- it’s nothing. Promise you’ll come get me if you need anything.”

Usually he was the one who said things like that, but Bucky just squeezed her tight, one last time, and kissed her temple like he wouldn’t know how to fall asleep if he didn’t.

“G’night, sweet girl.”

And maybe she did kiss him again, just _one_ more time, and maybe it _was_ more enthusiastic than her godmother would have liked considering they were alone together well after dark- but maybe Steph didn’t care that much what anyone thought as long as Bucky was there with her, smiling close against her lips.

“I love you,” she said again, slowly and clearly so it’d get in past his thick skull and all those quiet doubts that weren’t his fault at all. “I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if this feels unfinished that is mostly intentional because I don't think the stuff they're working through in this will be totally resolved until their kids are in their teens at least (and of course we know every version of Steve Rogers has a capacity for forgiveness matched only by their ability to hang onto a grudge for decades and centuries- but only on behalf of other people).


	17. in which Gary adopts some kid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1925, when Bucky is five, Steph still four and a half, and Gary about eleven and feeling very grown-up about being firmly into double digits. The Sullivans are the people who had the grocery store before Millie's family, is why we've never seen Ricky before or since.

Gary had just about resigned himself to sweeping the steps _again_ by way of filling up a whole hour’s chores when he was distracted by a persistent thumping just around the corner. He wasn’t strictly meant to leave his post, he knew, but surely due diligence covered keeping half an eye on the store’s immediate surroundings? Deciding he could afford to chance it- or lie and say he hadn’t if it came to that- Gary laid his broom and dustpan aside in favour of heading back out into the sunshine. The source of the noise turned out to be a kid who looked way too young to be left alone, scowling fiercely at his lap while he kicked his feet against the ledge on which he was perched.

“Hey. You on your own out here?”

The kid nodded once, watching Gary with pale, startlingly intense eyes. After a moment, he seemed to decide Gary could be trusted.

“’m s’posed to be at Sarah’s, only sometimes Jack’n Hannah talk too much when I just want to- not.”

Gary laughed out loud in spite of himself. He’d met the Miller kids, and it was all too easy to picture the two of them overwhelming this quiet, oddly melancholy boy with their chatter.

“Where’s your little shadow got to?”

The kid’s brows drew together.

“My what?”

 “Your cousin or whatever.”

Most of the time they were practically glued together, hand in hand or arm in arm- even in church they knelt with their heads bowed together as if praying one joint prayer. Gary’s mam couldn’t get enough of it, which unfortunately meant that Gary never seemed to miss an update. “That little girl who-”

“Steph.”

He said it quite gently, for a little kid- in Gary’s experience they tended to holler everything they weren’t sobbing about. “She’s not my cousin, she’s my-“

There was a silence, then the kid shrugged helplessly.

“My Steph, you know?”

Gary wasn’t sure he did, and said as much. The boy who had a Steph shrugged again, obviously frustrated with Gary’s inexperience in the field.

“She’s just my Steph, is all.”

“If you say so,” Gary offered, because after all he had no reason to disagree. The kid nodded enthusiastically.

“Yeah. When we get grown we’re gonna get married.”

Gary knew, especially from that time Hannah Miller had asked him to marry her, that it would be a bad idea to laugh. He shut his eyes, forcing his mouth back into a serious-ish line.

“Are you?”

Apparently they were. The boy was murmuring something earnest and complicated-sounding about bedtimes and doors, but Gary wasn’t sure he’d grasped the logic of it at all so he just smiled and nodded every time those silver eyes darted up to check if he was listening.

“Good for you.”

The kid smiled, a little shyly.

“’m Bucky. Bucky Barnes.”

It sure wasn’t a Yankee name. They were real fresh off the boat, Gary remembered his mother whispering one time at church- didn’t even speak English all the time, at home. Feeling generous, Gary extended his hand as if addressing someone much closer to his own age.

“Gary Richards.”

They shook hands solemnly, then Gary reiterated his question in a more obviously teasing tone of voice. “So how come you’re on your own?”

It was the wrong question, somehow- the kid’s expression shut down completely as he glanced away- over the road and up a couple storeys like he was trying to see into the apartment from which he had apparently been banished.

“Doc’s upstairs.”

The way he said it, Gary got the distinct feeling it wasn’t the first time.

“Your Steph get sick a lot?”

Bucky nodded, obviously troubled.

“She was cryin’n everything,” he confided quietly- then resumed scowling as his heels connected quite violently with brick. “I _hate_ stupid asthma.”

That was fair enough, Gary thought.  

“She’ll be okay,” he decided, mostly because it wasn’t right that a kid so young should look so down about anything other than that it was too darn cold for ice-cream. Bucky looked nothing short of hopeful.

“You think?”

“Sure.”

Gary patted the kid’s shoulder authoritatively, like Ricky Sullivan did every week before handing him his pay. “How can she not, when she’s got her own best guy lookin’ out for her?”

He was rewarded with another shy, fleeting kind of smile. When Bucky shivered, Gary realized abruptly that he could hardly feel his own fingers.

“You wanna come inside for a bit? I gotta clean up before Ricky gets back.”

He had been fully expecting Bucky to decline in favour of staring longingly at the window, but the kid slid off his perch without the slightest hesitation.

“I can help, maybe.”

He probably could, in that it wasn’t exactly a _hard_ job- but Gary wasn’t about to put an upset toddler to work no matter how much more interesting it would have made his day.

“Naw, you just sit there and don’t, I dunno. Break anything.”

Bucky Barnes swore up and down that he never would, honest. Gary glanced around, decided Mrs. Sullivan wouldn’t mind _too_ much, and handed his new friend a bar of solid milk chocolate.

“They’ll take it off my pay,” he murmured under the heat of that uneasy gaze. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks,” Bucky whispered, overawed. Instead of unwrapping it immediately like Gary would have done, the boy tucked it carefully away for later consumption.

“You’re gonna give it to your girl, Gary realized, a little disbelieving. Bucky smiled a little.

“Get-well present,” he nodded- then seemed to decide Gary needed reassuring. “We’ll share, I mean. I’ll still eat it.”

“Good,” Gary nodded, not sure there was anything he could say to that. He nudged the kid playfully in the arm. “Can I get you some tea or something, or are you gonna have to wrap that up for your Steph as well?”

Bucky decided he could probably just drink some tea, if Gary was _very_ sure that was allowed. He sipped it quietly, supervising the final cleaning of the front step with earnest attention.

“Five years old and you’re engaged already,” Gary mused, putting the broom away for the final time that day. “How’d you get her dad to say yes?”

Bucky frowned.

“Her Dad?”

The biggest obstacle to most proposals, Gary surmised from standing around while his mother did her after-church stuff, was what the girl’s daddy had to say before he said yes. Bucky looked disturbed.

“We haven’t asked him.”

They probably should, Gary thought. His new friend nodded soberly.

“I will when she’s better.”

That, too, sounded fair enough- but the kid was frowning again. “Is it only the girl’s da?”

It was, Gary was pretty sure. Bucky looked deeply relieved.

“’s good. Mine’s-”

His eyes slid away from Gary’s, all confidence leeching from his stance in a way Gary knew all too well.

“Was it the war?”

The kid shrugged in a world-weary kind of way.

“Mam says he’s not coming back, anyway.”

Still alive, then, but out of the picture. Gary wondered if his mother knew, and whether she thought that was worse or better than a guy who’d loved them both but who’d been gone so long he hardly remembered more than flashes of that uniform, or a smile as warm as his mother’s but more like Gary’s own.

“It’s just us too,” he offered, returning several confidences with one of his own. “Me’n my mam, I mean.”

The kid nodded gravely; for some reason, it made Gary smile. “ And we don’t even have a Steph, you know.”

Bucky slipped off the stool where Gary had stashed him to come around and grab his hand.

“’s okay. Auntí says most people wait ‘til they’re grown up to find their ones.”

This kid was something, Gary thought. He squeezed Bucky’s hand, definitely to avoid offending him and not out of any kind of unexpected urge to look after him.

“Thanks, kid.”

He glanced across the street. “You sure you don’t have to get back to Sarah’s?”

Bucky pulled a face; Gary grinned and messed up his hair like Ricky did to him.

“Forget I said anything. You wanna count these pennies for me? We gotta put them away by tens.”

They didn’t, actually, at all- but Gary figured he could wait until the kid was old enough to be trusted with some more useful chore before he told him that. He was still stocking the shelves, keeping half an eye on Bucky and his pennies, when Sarah Miller came looking for her lost charge.

“James Buchanan Barnes! How in heaven’s name did you end up _here_?”

The little boy smiled beatifically.

“Gary found me,” he announced. “We’re gonna be pals now.”

Gary raised one hand, a little reluctantly, when the doyenne of Middagh Street looked round appraisingly.

“Are you indeed?”

Gary nodded; Bucky positively glowed with pleasure.

“See?”

Sarah nodded; Gary had never seen her look so gentle.

“I do, as well. Good for you both.”

She was already ushering him towards the door. “Say goodbye to your new pal, all right? Your Steph’ll be missing you by now.”

Bucky nodded with all the weight of that responsibility, but seemed relieved to know that his exile had officially been ended. He offered Gary a solemn kind of wave.

“He’ll say yes,” he promised, very sure. Gary grinned, both at the kid’s raw-steel determination and at Sarah Miller’s baffled look, and waved enthusiastically instead of saying anything that might tip her off.


	18. in which Steph gets her groove back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> March 1941

“Lucky girl.”

Mrs. Lynch nudged Steph’s shoulder affectionately on her way to refresh her tea. “I bet you’re counting the hours already.”

Steph looked up from the envelopes she was addressing, expression mostly blank.

“What?”

“Don’t be shy,” Maria Quinn smirked from her own desk. “We’ve all been there, you know.”

She patted her rounding belly with tangible pride, but Steph still had no idea where they were supposed to be or have been.

“I remember those days,” Mrs. Olsen agreed, sharing a starry-eyed look with the other two. “Ah, newlyweds- poor lad will be beside himself on that dock.”

“Poor Gary,” Maria chuckled. When she winked slyly, the pieces slotted abruptly into place.

“Oh,” Steph breathed, cheeks already heating. Mrs. Lynch gave a snort of gleeful laughter.

“Yes, _oh_. Sometimes I forget you’re so young.”

Still grinning like a Cheshire cat, she reached across Maria to snag the sheaf of envelopes Steph had been working on. “Go on, then. I’ll finish this so you can get out of here.”

Stephanie tilted her head, not sure what to make of that. Bucky wouldn’t be home until much later, which they all knew because on the rare occasion that he did get off earlier he always came straight to the church office to charm the secretaries and make faces at Steph until she begged off to go and deal with him. Maria elbowed her gently.

“Get your chores done early,” she suggested, grinning the same anticipatory grin as the others. “Dinner on the table in time to put on his favourite perfume, right?”

That… didn’t sound even a little bit like any night Steph had shared with her husband in the three weeks they'd been married.

“Right,” she nodded uncertainly, taking her purse when Mrs. Olsen handed it over by way of giving her official permission to leave early. “Yeah, of course. Thanks.”

The other woman beamed.

“You’re very welcome. You kids have a good night, now.”

She trudged home with their conspiring giggles still ringing in her ears. The dinner on their table was made by Sarah Miller or Mrs. Richards more often than not, and if Bucky had ever had a favourite perfume Steph didn’t have the first idea what it was. And as for the rest of it- for the first time, Steph wondered whether she was already failing to fulfill her side of the contract she valued more than she knew how to express. God knew Bucky had only ever done his best by her, and more than that, while she- she’d spent maybe half their time as newlyweds too sick to talk to him properly, never mind any of the stuff they’d been so carefully not talking about.

Steph was sobbing pretty hard by the time she slammed the lid on her mother’s stew pot, her head already throbbing because of course she’d get a headache if she insisted on weeping like an infant just because she couldn’t goddamn get things right.

“No,” she said out loud, staggering off to wash her face and fix her hair. She didn’t quite manage Maria’s perfect chignon, but it was better, probably, than the stupid braid she hadn’t even bothered to improve on. “I’m fine.”

She stared herself down in the mirror that had been her godmother’s, willing it to be true. Of course he deserved at least as much as any other guy would expect.

“Of course I’m fine. Better than fine, even.”   

She was back by the stove but still taking deep, slow breaths designed to keep her headache in check when the front door creaked.

“Hey.”  

Bucky set his bag down without breaking his stride, reaching for Steph before he shed his coat. “What’s all this?”

He shouldn’t have to be surprised that his own wife knew how to feed him. Stephanie smiled against his lips.

“Dinner, obviously.”

She tugged on his hair to dismiss him. “Go sit, I’ll just be a minute.”

He laughed softly when she smacked his hand away from the cutlery drawer.

“I’ve got it, J.”

“Fine,” her husband murmured, ducking his head to kiss her cheek before he backed off obediently. “You know I’m still allowed to help, though, right?”

Steph wasn’t sure how to say out loud that he shouldn’t have to, allowed or not, so she just nodded absently as she kept her eyes fixed on the stew in front of her.

“Sure. Thanks.”

Her voice wavered treacherously, and of course her husband noticed right away.

“You feeling okay?”

Steph concentrated on filling two plates.

“Just fine, sweetheart.”  

He raised an eyebrow, curious, but let her get away with both deflection and endearment without comment. They had dinner in relative quiet, Bucky reporting what he’d got up to with Gary and the lads while Steph worked on chewing and swallowing without letting him see how much everything had started tasting like ash in her mouth. She realized she was failing when Bucky set down his spoon to cover Steph’s free hand with his.

“You _sure_ you’re not starting one of those headaches?”

She could just tell him, of course- but he’d get all worried, and decide it was his job to go turning down the lights and shutting doors and everything else, and then there was no _way_ he’d want to-

“I’m fine.”

Steph turned her hand so they were palm to palm, stroking her fingers slowly along his before twining their hands together. “C’mon, you.”

He stood up with her, curious but game to go along with whatever she thought she was doing.

“We goin’ somewhere?”

Steph shrugged, aiming for the kind of coy smile that she assumed went along with being the kind of wife who knew what her husband’s favourite perfume was.

“Just to bed, I thought.”

Her smile grew less forced as Bucky flushed immediately, right down his chest. Feeling bolder, she leaned over and kissed him, right there over the dinner she should have realized had been her job for weeks already. Her husband breathed her name like he wasn’t sure he deserved to say it, so Steph wrapped both arms around his neck and tried to show him how completely it was all his, and how sorry she was he didn’t seem to know that. She didn’t realise she was swaying on her feet until Bucky pulled back to watch her face.

“Hey. What’s wrong?”

He was keeping her upright mostly by himself, Steph realized, struggling to focus on his face. She was breathing all wrong, her vision fading at the edges, and of course Bucky already knew she couldn’t do a damned thing without him there to pick up the pieces during or after. Her lip wobbled.

“I wanted- I just thought-”

And then she was bawling in earnest- not weeping delicately but crying like a child who’d been kicked in the face, with big ugly sobs that wracked her whole frame as Bucky looked on in wide-eyed dismay. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I- I- just-”

She flinched bodily when he caught her arm, which made everything worse at once- Bucky backed up so quick he nearly knocked over the chair behind him. She was not only failing entirely to seduce him- now she had him convinced he’d hurt her, and if she didn’t get a handle on her breathing soon she was going to throw up on top of everything else.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, a little choked up himself. “I’ll get Sarah, okay? She’ll-”

“No!”

He froze at the panic in Steph’s voice, but seemed unwilling to move until he knew for sure what she needed. “No - please don’t go.”

Her eyes squeezed shut so she wouldn’t have to see the mess she’d made.

“I love you. I’m sorry, I just- I love you.”

“Steph.”

He took her hand- gingerly as if he was scared she might scream- and eased her closer when she didn’t. “Breathe deep for me, okay?”  

He held her close, stroking her neck while she did her best to obey.

“That’s my girl. You’re doing fine, a chroí.”

Steph looped her arms around her husband’s neck and cried against his shoulder. Bucky kissed her cheek, so much more tenderly than she deserved, and held her close until she was steady enough to let go of him.

“Sorry,” she muttered, tangling her fingers with his so he’d know she wasn’t really trying to get away. “I’m sorry, Bucky, I just-“

She faltered, but he just squeezed her hand to say he’d wait, and that he knew she could do it.

“I wanted to be _right_ for you, you know?”

He laughed, too warmly to upset her.

“You’ve been right for me since we were hardly five years old, Steph.”

That- was actually truer than anything else Steph had ever known.

“Oh,” she said quietly. For the second time that day, comprehension struck like lightning. “ _Oh.”_

His lips quirked like he couldn’t help it.

“You wanna tell me what’s what here?”

Steph snuggled up to him, closing her eyes as a real feeling of peace washed over her.

“I thought maybe you’d want to have a normal night for once, that’s all.”

Her husband kissed her cheek.

“Normal for who, exactly?”

That, Steph realized, was the question she’d forgotten to ask herself earlier.

“Maria from my work, I think.”

Bucky considered that, straight-faced, for a good few seconds.  

“Thank God we’re not married to Maria from your work, then.”

It was so unexpected, and so perfectly pitched as a response, that Steph had to stop replaying her every error of judgment to laugh out loud.

“I love you,” she whispered when she could, turning to kiss her husband’s cheek. At the last second, she changed her mind and kissed his jaw instead- and then again, and one more time just because. She saw Bucky’s eyelashes flutter and remembered with sudden clarity the way he’d gasped, a week or so ago, when she’d found just _that_ -

“Steph,” her husband rasped, and Steph realized with some surprise that she was straddling his lap as she tugged at his shirt. “You sure?”

Bucky was watching her with eyes that were somehow both heavy-lidded with desire and sharp with concern.

“Not twenty minutes ago you were-”

“Forget it,” Steph whispered, right up against his mouth. “I was being stupid.”

He’d already managed to free her hair from that silly attempt at someone else’s updo. That was good work, she decided; to reward him, Steph caught his lip between her teeth and watched his eyes go dark.

The next time she caught his hand, Bucky didn’t have to ask where she thought they were going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pretty much just because I've been thinking about their various insecurities for reasons relating to other fics, especially in terms of Steve's versus Steph's.
> 
> I don't know if it shows, exactly, but I tend to write Steph's asthma as mostly asthma with an edge of anxiety because panic attacks are a sometimes-associated condition and I definitely think Steve is highly strung enough that that makes quite a lot of sense.  
> also there is a whole separate thing going on here with respect to Bucky's particular anxieties but I think that is probably for another time entirely.


	19. in which theory is all well and good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1927, winter turning into spring

The important thing, the other mothers agreed firmly, was to keep the two babes apart so James couldn’t catch Stephanie’s cold and start a cycle of contagion that could take months to run its course. It seemed like sound advice- and goodness knew they couldn’t afford to let Stephanie get sick any more than she already did- but it quickly became clear to Winifred that none of their friends had never had to contend with the practicalities of forcibly separating Steph Rogers and Bucky Barnes for any length of time.

“Mam!”

Opening one eye a crack, Fred watched her son bounce anxiously on his heels. “ _Today_ can I go see my Steph?”

“It’s not even six yet, a Shéamais.”

“She’s awake, though.”

She wasn’t just awake, Fred realised as wakefulness came more fully upon her- Stephanie was well on her way to a proper screaming tantrum on the other side of the thin wall that divided their two bedrooms.

“Oh dear.”

Bucky nodded with feeling.

“Steph,” they heard her mother protest in an exhausted, sympathetic tone that made Fred wonder guiltily whether Sarah and her daughter had had a worse night than it had looked like when she’d come home close to midnight. “You need to calm down, all right?”

“I _am_ calm,” the little girl very nearly shrieked. “I’m _so_ calm, I just _want my Bucky_ but you won’t _let me-_ ”

But by then she was coughing too hard to speak, and then struggling to breathe, and then Bucky’s little hands were clenching into white-knuckled fists as his pleading eyes brimmed with sympathetic tears.

“ _Mam_.”

On balance, Fred thought, her son was much more likely to begrudge her this moment than he ever had been to hold his next brush with cold or fever against her.  

“Go on, then.”

She was rewarded by a smile, tentative but truly joyful.

“Yeah?”

Bucky hugged her tight when she nodded, skinny arms wrapping tight around her waist before he slid off the bed and out the door almost in a single movement.

“G’ramga!”

Fred was still chuckling sleepily when her son breached the forbidden door, yanking it open so violently the floorboards creaked along with the hinges.

“Bucky,” she heard Sarah murmur, gently admonishing. “You know your mam said-”

“It’s fine,” Fred called, dragging herself gingerly to her feet- if they were all up, she thought, someone might as well put the tea on. “He’s going spare on this side, Sarah, and if I’m honest he’s this close to taking me with him.”  

Her best friend laughed, tired but relieved.

“That’s that, then. Morning, a Shéamais.”

Fred reached the doorway in time to see Stephanie raise her poor head from her mother’s lap.

“Bucky.”

He’d already clambered up to join them, but had apparently been waiting for permission to speak.  

“Hiya.”

He seemed content to smile at her, concern making him almost shy- but Steph wasted no time at all throwing her arms around him.   

“Bucky, Bucky.”

She was crying again, her apparently bodily relief at having him back leaving her boneless in his surprised embrace. Sarah was watching them both with wan affection, ready to intervene. If Hannah Miller had ever tried that on her brother, Fred thought, Jack would have run a mile- but her son just leaned in close with sympathetic tears slipping down his own reddening cheeks.  

“Missed you every second, Stephie.”

He meant that literally, Fred knew.

“You too.”

She was stroking his arms with clumsy affection now, studying his still-tired face as seriously as if he’d been the one consigned to bed rest for days. “You been okay on your own?”

Bucky nodded, murmuring something deferential about school being no fun, or church, but then he frowned and blurted out the thought his mother was sure had been on his mind since he’d shot out of bed himself.

“You shouldn’t yell like that, it’ll make your-”

He hesitated, glancing towards Sarah for help as his hand drifted towards his neck. “Scornach?”

“Throat, a leanbh.”

Grinning his thanks, he turned his attention back to Steph.

“Your that’ll hurt worse, I meant.”

It was a risky thing, telling Steph Rogers what she could or couldn’t do in relation to her various sicknesses- but then it _was_ Bucky, and a Bucky she hadn’t been allowed to see in days, no less. Steph nodded meekly before settling her head on his shoulder.  

“Don’t have t’yell now, anyway.”

She offered her mother a small, conciliatory smile. “C’n we keep reading now?”

They had been working their way through _The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle,_ but even before she’d got too sick to be properly distracted Steph had been reluctant to go any further without Bucky on hand to share their progress. Sarah smiled, stroking her daughter’s cheek to check her temperature surreptitiously.

“Is your head less sore, then?”

Stephanie blinked, surprised.

“Yeah.”

She pulled away to beam at her small protector. “You fixed it.”

“Did I?”

Steph nodded, still smiling sweetly. Bucky hugged her quickly.

“’s good. Wish I could fix th’rest of it too.”

Steph shook her head, quite stern for a seven-year-old.

“Doc Michaels couldn’t either, ‘n he’s a doctor’n all.”

Bucky nodded reluctantly, but Sarah thought he looked reassured. They turned to her as one, hopeful and expectant in equal parts.

“Right.”

She picked up the brightly coloured library book, flipping through it quickly until she found the place where they’d last left Tommy Stubbins and his friends. “Chapter eight: Are you a good noticer?”

“You are,” Steph murmured, smiling at her fiancé. “Isn’t he?”

“I’d say so,” Fred volunteered. She presented her son with a mug of hot milk with honey, a treat rather than a tonic, and winked at Sarah over their children’s heads when Bucky insisted in a tone that brooked no argument that he only wanted any if Steph could have some too. They didn’t get much further- it _was_ barely half past five in the morning, and Steph was still almost too sick to stay upright without support- but it was the calmest and most cooperative either of the kids had been in days. They fell asleep just as they were, Bucky leaning into Sarah so he could follow along as she read and Steph passed out very nearly in his arms. For a moment Fred was tempted to rearrange them, just on principle- but they were so deeply asleep already.

Of course her boy woke up again with a sore throat and itchy eyes, and of _course_ he was running a fever by evening. And maybe Sarah Miller would have done better at keeping the kids apart, Fred thought as she swapped out a batch of warmed towels for cooler ones, but on the other hand it was the first night in six or seven that they’d been able to tuck them in together, and there they were, fast asleep with their little hands all but entwined between them, and not a single tear on any of their poor flushed cheeks.

“It’s fine,” she said again, later, when Sarah tried to take responsibility for Bucky getting sick. “With these two it was always going to happen, wasn’t it?”

Sarah smiled, helpless in the face of an incontrovertible truth, and went to put the kettle on by way of expressing ‘thanks’ and ‘sorry, really’ in a form even Winifred Barnes had to accept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not exactly new Irish: that incomprehensible thing was a sleepy seven-year-old attempt at 'thank you'  
> The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle is from 1922 I'm almost sure.


	20. in which Sarah takes a while to catch on

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> summer of 1929, because Bucky has a lot of quiet anxieties he shares only with Steph, which means Steph has all of his anxieties plus her own, and there's no version of Steve Rogers who has anything like a decent poker face.

When Stephanie sighed shakily for the third time in as many minutes, Sarah Rogers set down her mending and went to join her daughter by the window.

“What’s wrong, a Mháire?”

Steph had been quiet since she’d come home from the library - alone, for once, because the summer air was too thick with pollen for her to stay and watch the others play baseball the way she normally did when Bucky wanted to join in. Sarah frowned- it wasn’t like her daughter’s little fiancé to be anything but understanding, especially with respect to Steph’s health, but after all he was only nine years old and prone to the same fits of self-indulgence as any other kid that age. “You’re not rowing with your James, are you?”

Stephanie shook her head so urgently that it made Sarah’s own head pound just to watch. Her daughter sighed again, just as gustily as before, and chewed her lip for a good few seconds before squaring her shoulders, decision made.

“Bucky can stay with us, right, if his da comes back and Auntí wants to go away home with him?”

Her daughter’s expression was determined, her small hands already fisting defensively in her skirt.  
“They can’t just _make_ him if he doesn’t wanna go with.”

Sarah stroked her daughter’s arm soothingly until she was sure she could speak with a straight face.

“You really think your Auntí would leave her boy for anyone or anything?”

It was a miscalculation of epic proportions- in mere seconds Stephanie was crying so hard she had to brace herself against the windowsill to stay upright. She was still protesting, gasping resolute denials between great, devastating sobs.

“I _won’t_ let’em just-”

“Stephanie,” Sarah broke in, not quite pleading. “Calm down, sweetheart.”

She gathered her daughter into a hug, murmuring soft reassurances as Steph shuddered in her arms. “Why’re you even thinking about this?”

“Peggy McLachlan’s da came back,” Steph murmured, her still-choked voice low and earnest. “From Pittsburgh, she said, and now they’re all goin’ out there and she’s not ever coming back to school or church or _anything_.”

Sarah bit her cheek, hard, because if ever there was a time to fight with all her faculties _not_ to laugh out loud in sheer relief that was it.

“I see,” she said gravely, stroking Stephanie’s feathery hair. “That’s different, though, isn’t it? He just went ahead- they’ve been planning to move for a couple years now.”

Besides which Peggy’s parents were still married, their mutual affection plain to anyone who saw them together, but that part of the conversation Sarah was still hoping to put off until the kids were well into double digits.

“I promise your Auntí’s got no plans to take your Bucky anywhere just now, okay?”

“She can’t take him _ever_ ,” Steph hissed. “He’s gotta stay _here_ , with _me_ , or how’re we gonna get married’n all that stuff?”

Sarah laughed in spite of herself. She bent quickly to kiss Stephanie’s forehead in apology.

“Your James would walk back here from San Francisco for you if he had to, you know that.”  

Stephanie paled, gripping her mother’s shoulders in undisguised alarm.

“Is his da in _San Francisco_?”

She said it the way Sarah might have said ‘Bombay’ or ‘Timbuktu.’

“I don’t know, a Mháire.”

In a way, she thought, the more surprising thing was that they’d gone so long without having this conversation. “Last we heard he was in New Jersey, but that was years ago.”

Her daughter thought that over, frowning deeply.

“Jersey’s not so far away.”

She didn’t sound any more certain than Sarah had ever been whether that was a good thing.

“That was years ago,” she said again, trying to stave off a half-formed vision of her daughter crossing state lines to give George Barnes a piece of her mind. “For all we know he might well be in California by now.”

Steph was quiet for a while, twisting her skirt in restless hands.

“Still,” she said quietly, scowling. “He _can’t_ just-”

She fell silent, head snapping round at the unmistakable clatter of little boys on the stairs.

“Bucky!”

He burst in only seconds later, rosy-cheeked and panting like a pup.

“‘m so hot I think I’m gonna-”

He cut himself off much as Steph had done, already eyeing her warily. “Y’okay?”

Stephanie nodded, smiling almost shyly, but of course Bucky had already noticed how red and swollen her eyes were. He scowled just as fiercely as Steph had been doing before.

“Stupid plants with their stupid pollen, I wish they’d just- lay eggs or something.”

Stephanie said nothing at all, but slipped out of her mother’s arms to cross the room and hug Bucky tight.

“Promise you won’t go away without me.”

“’Course not.”

He hugged her back, just as tightly, but his eyes were worried as they darted, fleetingly, towards Sarah in the window seat. “Where’d I go, even?”

“Dunno. You can’t, though.”

Bucky nodded seriously.

“‘Course I won’t.”

He frowned. “Unless you need special medicine or something.”

Steph raised her head curiously.  

“Like those guys in Alaska, y’mean?”

He was already grinning at the thought of it. Steph nudged him, straight-faced but teasing. “Where’re you gonna get sled dogs in Brooklyn?”

Bucky looked perfectly unphased.  

“If you need’em I’ll get some.”

“But you’d come back after.”

For a nine-year-old, Sarah thought, he did exasperation very convincingly.

“That’s the whole idea.”

She smiled at last.

“‘s fine, then. Only if it’s an emergency, okay?”

“Sure, Steph.”

She nodded seriously, shooting her mother a triumphant smile over his shoulder.

“It’s good you’ve settled that,” Sarah offered; Stephanie nodded almost regally. “How was your game, a Shéamais?”

Bucky shrugged indifferently.

“Hot. And we can’t tell who won, cos Matty Olsen kept switchin’ teams when his one was losing, and then Jack made other people switch so the numbers’d be the same, so in the end nobody knew anymore who was on which side.”

Stephanie frowned, disturbed by the inequity of it all.

“How come you guys let him do that?”

“’s no fun playing outfield,” Bucky suggested, not unsympathetic. “I guess he got bored way out there on his own.”

Something seemed to harden in Steph’s expression.

“They didn’t make _you_ go out there, though.”

“Naw, I was batting mostly.”

His expression brightened. “They kept tryin’a get me out, only-”

“Only you’re too quick,” Steph declared, visibly proud of him. “You should get some water, Doc Michaels says it’s important in summer.”

“For you,” Bucky protested, but he let her drag him unerringly towards the sink. “We can share, maybe.”

Sarah chuckled quietly, needle already back in hand.

“Of course you will,” she murmured instead of pointing out that they had more than enough glasses for them to have one each. Her daughter was all smiles again by the time they came to join her, Bucky clutching both their books so that Steph could handle their glass without letting go of him for a second.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...happy fathers' day? ? ?


End file.
